Web Search–Google
Source: The Wall Street Journal
A Contest to Manipulate Google Results (registration required)
From the article, “An online ad company and a search-themed Web site are sponsoring a contest that shows how easy search results can be manipulated. The winners: sites that rank highest in Google searches on June 7 and July 7 for the “invented” term (actually a play on Dark Blue Sea Ltd., an Australian company that is a contest sponsor).” The apparent ease that some people have manipulating Google (and other web engines) is not good news for the company, web search and most importantly the typical searcher who enters 2.5 terms and clicks the search button.”

Library Stuff’s Steven Cohen was kind enought to share a couple of comments with ResourceShelf.
He writes, “While this article shows the public an important lesson on the ability to manipulate results in Google, it also displays what librarians have been teaching our patrons for years. That what is found on the first ten hits can lead the searcher to results that may not be the best for the particular issue at hand. In fact, we also preach the use of numerous other resources to gain quality results (LII, etc). Google does not equal quality research, as this article implicitly demonstrates.”

See Also: Andy Beal points out that the report is incorrect in stating that “cheating” is not allowed.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2004 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.