Sex & the Search Engine

[Alis Whitt]

General search engines (such as HotBot, AltaVista) are becoming useless as
information retrieval tools. I'd like to see a few search engines develop
a "not" button which would eliminate all porn sites from the results list.
This isn't a freedom of speech / offensive content issue; I resent the
enormous waste of my time.  

I tried the search you described below.  I can't even locate "superbowl" 
in the HTML code of some of these sites.  The third "relevant" site in
AltaVista (free nude celebs)
does not have "superbowl" in the code -- anywhere. Up to now, I've at
least been able to provide users with a logical explanation for why they
get sex when they ask for superbowl (meta tags, white words on a white
background, etc.).  What's up here? 

It it weren't for Argus, Northern Light, Point's top 5% and other sites
that make some effort towards providing quality, I'd probably go back to
Readers' Guide in print.  

 Alis Whitt
 whitta at cofc.edu
 College of Charleston Library

On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 cadieux at librarybook.com wrote:

> Jan. 23, 1998
> 
> This morning I attempted a standard AltaVista search on "superbowl."
> I queried for hits from 21/Dec/97 and later.
> 
> For "superbowl" none of the top 5 sites had anything significant to do with
> this year's superbowl.  Two of the top five hits were sites offering
> subscriptions to nude picture archives.
> 
> Just for the heck of it, I also did a search on "windows 98."  My top hit
> was a sex site promoting "Pregnant Hot Virgins."
> 
> The upshot: Search engine results are becoming LESS valuable, and
> librarians who are finding, categorizing, and promoting useful, relevant
> sites are becoming MORE valuable.  Generally speaking, librarians are
> trusted by the public, and here is an opportunity to build on this trust.
> 
> Joseph Cadieux
> Director
> Kent Memorial Library
> Suffield, Connecticut 06078
> cadieux at suffield-library.org      
> 
>