Sex & the Search Engine

[Nick Arnett]

At 10:05 AM 1/23/98 -0800, Alis Whitt wrote:
...
>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 at http://onewebstreet.com/total/index.html)
>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?

You may be looking at a version that's been edited since it was indexed.

It would be good if the major search engines would incorporate PICS
ratings, for the purpose you described -- filtering out irrelevant
information, regardless of its offensiveness.  The W3C's meta-data
initiatives have a goal of merging PICS and other meta-data by encoding it
as RDF (Resource Description Framework).

See http://www.w3c.org/metadata/

Librarians are involved, via OCLC's participation.

Nick Arnett
--
    Senior Product Manager, Knowledge Applications
        Verity Inc.  (http://www.verity.com/)
        "Connecting People with Information"
  Phone: (408) 542-2164  E-mail: narnett at verity.com