New: Adversarial Information Retrieval: The Manipulation of Web Content
by Dennis Fetterly, Research Software Development Engineer, Microsoft Research

From the abstract:

Focuses on how search engine results can be manipulated by content providers. By using methods such as adding unrelated content to meta tags, duplicating information, and cloaking content so it is indexed differently, Web pages can improve their result rankings. While the economic incentive for achieving high rankings is significant, manipulated results undermine the trust of millions of users. Fetterly suggests research into link-based spam detection and the identification of spam blogs, and advocates the development of a clear set of rules for search engines.

Note to info pros:
For most of you, this article will not be anything you haven’t heard about before. Perhaps for some in a bit greater detail.

Like we’ve said MANY times, it’s important for info pros to understand not only how search engines work (technically) but also the business of commercial web search. Places to keep current not only include our blog but also Search Engine Land, Sphinn, Search Engine Roundtable, SEOMoz, Searchblog, and many others.

Of course, many in the SEO business (search engine optimization) do what it takes to properly reverse engineer an engine to get their clients’ content to the top of the results. But, just like any other business, others do “whatever it takes” to get the job done.

It’s not worth arguing whether it’s a good or bad thing because, at least for now, that’s the way it works.

This is why info pros need to understand a small degree about how business operates, know about a variety of search tools (or as Danny Sullivan calls them, “voices”), use the best tool for each job (just like selecting the best reference book), build collections of specialty or vertical engines (very important), and take advantage of the advanced search options that for the most part go unused but can help create a more precise result set. Of course, all of this is also worth teaching/training your patrons about. We’re talking “drivers ed” of search and IR. Btw, it’s also likely patrons will want to know more about the business of search.

Source: ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

See Also: Make Sure to Review Dennis Fetterly’s Web Page for Several Full Text Papers that Might Be of Interest
+ Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis
Alexandros Ntoulas, Marc Najork, Mark Manasse, and Dennis Fetterly.
15th International World Wide Web Conference (May 2006). [PDF]

+ Dennis Fetterly, Mark Manasse, Marc Najork, and Janet Wiener. A Large-Scale Study of the Evolution of Web Pages. Software: Practice & Experience, 34(2):213-237, February 2004. [draft]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 and is filed under Info Management and Retrieval, Information Industry, Information Science, Search News, Web Search. 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.