[WEB4LIB] Re: Google, Pikachu, porn, etc.

[Tim Klassen]

Tom Zimoski/Fresno County Library wrote

>It's not that unusual for a search engine to return on the first page of
>results some unexpected sexual material.  It hardly seems to matter what
>one was searching for.  I remember using alltheweb for a search, getting
>this unexpected sexual material, and then appending -sex to my original
>search. The results were much better on that particular search.  I
>understand that I might have eliminated some useful sites.
>
>It was that experience that led me to experiment with pikachu and porn as
>search terms. I'm still looking for help in understanding the result
>describe below.

Hi,

Can't explain the Pikachu porn numbers, but I have a possible explanation
of the porn on the first page of hits thingee. I've seen sites that put
hundreds of random words  (eg tom cruise information cats france etc...) at
the bottom of the page thus when they are indexed they end up at the top of
the list. Another trick is to place these words in the same color as the
background, thus rendering them invisible. Might explain the google thing
if these porn sites are linked to by many people? Also have you looked in
the meta tags? The words may be in there too.

best,
TimK



Tim Klassen
Science Librarian
Wesleyan University Science Library
Middletown Connecticut 06459
ph: 860-685-3729
fax: 860-685-5032
tklassen at wesleyan.edu
http://www.wesleyan.edu/~tklassen/