Search engines remain popular—and users are more satisfied than ever with the quality of search results—but many are anxious about the collection of personal information by search engines and other websites and say they do not like the idea of personalized search results or targeted advertising.
Though they generally do not support targeted search or ads, these users report very positive outcomes when it comes to the quality of information search provides, and more positive than negative experiences using search.
More HERE.
Showing posts with label search engines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label search engines. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Search engine manipulations by "black hat SEOs
I saw on a listserv info about two very interesting articles on how criminal elements manipulate search engines, especially Google. Yet one more reason to use more than one search engine! The abstracts follow:
Groups magnify their chances in fight for hits
"What they're doing isn't wrong," says Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University law school. "The fault is Google's, which hasn't come up with an algorithm that screens out all this junk content."
[Google]'s Mr [Amit Singhal] calls this the problem of "brand recognition": where companies whose standing is based on their success in one area use this to "venture out into another class of information which they may not be as rich at". Google uses human raters to assess the quality of individual sites in order to counter this effect, he adds.
"There's good SEO, allowing people to get to more relevant content," says Google's Mr Singhal. "And then sometimes people do shitty things and sometimes our algorithms are fooled/
Source: Richard Waters. Financial Times. London (UK): Jul 13, 2010. pg. 16 / ft.com
***
Criminals take advantage of search algorithms
Professional criminals are increasingly likely to outflank legitimate companies in competing for Google's algorithmic attention, security professionals say. Criminal gangs use a more sinister form of search engine optimisation, duping Google and its rivals into serving as unwitting vehicles for delivering web surfers to malicious pages. Known as "black hat SEO", the art includes conventional tricks such as stuffing articles with keywords and amassing links from affiliate sites. But it goes much further: The bad guys steal content from legitimate pages and spin the content with new wording, which practitioners say makes them hard to distinguish from the real thing. They hack into trustworthy sites directly and link to their own pages from there, piggybacking on good reputations to get better rankings. They also use [Google]'s own disclosures against it, leaping on Google Trends, which indicates newly popular subjects for searches, to throw together bogus pages faster than real news-oriented pages appear. The number of bad links is tripling every year, with the majority on legitimate websites that have been hacked, according to Bradley Anstis, M86 vicepresident. He said Google could help by digging deeper into the websites it ranks, looking at individual pages within them. What Google sees, though, is different from what the end users see. The con artists can tell when a search engine is visiting the site and they show content laden with keywords. When a potential victim arrives via Google, the criminals pull a switch, redirecting the visitor to another page with bad code.
Source: Joseph Menn. Financial Times. London (UK): Jul 13, 2010. pg. 16 / ft.com
Groups magnify their chances in fight for hits
"What they're doing isn't wrong," says Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University law school. "The fault is Google's, which hasn't come up with an algorithm that screens out all this junk content."
[Google]'s Mr [Amit Singhal] calls this the problem of "brand recognition": where companies whose standing is based on their success in one area use this to "venture out into another class of information which they may not be as rich at". Google uses human raters to assess the quality of individual sites in order to counter this effect, he adds.
"There's good SEO, allowing people to get to more relevant content," says Google's Mr Singhal. "And then sometimes people do shitty things and sometimes our algorithms are fooled/
Source: Richard Waters. Financial Times. London (UK): Jul 13, 2010. pg. 16 / ft.com
***
Criminals take advantage of search algorithms
Professional criminals are increasingly likely to outflank legitimate companies in competing for Google's algorithmic attention, security professionals say. Criminal gangs use a more sinister form of search engine optimisation, duping Google and its rivals into serving as unwitting vehicles for delivering web surfers to malicious pages. Known as "black hat SEO", the art includes conventional tricks such as stuffing articles with keywords and amassing links from affiliate sites. But it goes much further: The bad guys steal content from legitimate pages and spin the content with new wording, which practitioners say makes them hard to distinguish from the real thing. They hack into trustworthy sites directly and link to their own pages from there, piggybacking on good reputations to get better rankings. They also use [Google]'s own disclosures against it, leaping on Google Trends, which indicates newly popular subjects for searches, to throw together bogus pages faster than real news-oriented pages appear. The number of bad links is tripling every year, with the majority on legitimate websites that have been hacked, according to Bradley Anstis, M86 vicepresident. He said Google could help by digging deeper into the websites it ranks, looking at individual pages within them. What Google sees, though, is different from what the end users see. The con artists can tell when a search engine is visiting the site and they show content laden with keywords. When a potential victim arrives via Google, the criminals pull a switch, redirecting the visitor to another page with bad code.
Source: Joseph Menn. Financial Times. London (UK): Jul 13, 2010. pg. 16 / ft.com
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Revolutionary British search engine will be 'as important as Google'
By Claire Bates
A renowned British physicist is launching a new internet search engine in May, which experts said could be as important as Google.
Professor Stephen Wolfram, founder of software company Wolfram Research, announced that work was almost finished on the first phase of his 'computational knowledge engine.'
Most search engines like Google and Yahoo scan through billions of web pages for keywords or phrases and return a series of documents that may contain the answer to your question, or point you in the right direction.
'We can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can’t figure anything new out,' Professor Wolfram said.
However, the London-born physicist claims his website 'Wolfram Alpha' can understand what you are looking for and calculate a single precise answer.
The entire article can be read at
<>
A renowned British physicist is launching a new internet search engine in May, which experts said could be as important as Google.
Professor Stephen Wolfram, founder of software company Wolfram Research, announced that work was almost finished on the first phase of his 'computational knowledge engine.'
Most search engines like Google and Yahoo scan through billions of web pages for keywords or phrases and return a series of documents that may contain the answer to your question, or point you in the right direction.
'We can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can’t figure anything new out,' Professor Wolfram said.
However, the London-born physicist claims his website 'Wolfram Alpha' can understand what you are looking for and calculate a single precise answer.
The entire article can be read at
<>
Friday, August 08, 2008
Search Engine Use
From Pew/Internet. "The percentage of internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one-third of all users in 2002, to a new high of just under one-half (49%). With this increase, the number of those using a search engine on a typical day is pulling ever closer to the 60% of internet users who use email, arguably the Internet's all-time killer app, on a typical day."
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Is Cuil Cool?
A new search engine, Cuil - pronounced "cool" - started today. You can read all about its claims of being "better than Google" here and here, among many other places. Apparently, it was having start-up jityters, as one person indicated that one couldn't access it at all fotr a time.
But I got through and tried New York State Small Business Development Center; it actually suggested the whole name after I had typed New York State Sm
My result:
We didn’t find any results for "New York State Small Business Development Center"
Some reasons might be...
a typo. Please check your spelling.
your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.
Finally, try to think of different words to describe your search.
It’s the first item on Google. Meh.
And as a matter of vanity, I cuiled my blogs and they showed on the 7th page, while they're on the first page on Google.
As this writer noted: Cuil Not So Cool.
But I got through and tried New York State Small Business Development Center; it actually suggested the whole name after I had typed New York State Sm
My result:
We didn’t find any results for "New York State Small Business Development Center"
Some reasons might be...
a typo. Please check your spelling.
your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.
Finally, try to think of different words to describe your search.
It’s the first item on Google. Meh.
And as a matter of vanity, I cuiled my blogs and they showed on the 7th page, while they're on the first page on Google.
As this writer noted: Cuil Not So Cool.
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