Re: Search engine rankings...as if you cared!

From: Robert J. Woodhead (AnimEigo) <trebor_at_animeigo.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1999 21:59:28 -0600 (CST)

ROB VAN SLYKE @ TENAGRA WROTE:
> If Hot Bot uses a technology that lists the most visited
> links first, how is a site expected to rise to the top of
> their list and have a chance at becoming the most visited in
> their search engine if they are not in the first few pages
> of the results?
>
> It's a catch-22 situation. To be found in the first few
> pages on Hot Not (Freudian type-o - Hot Bot) you have be the
> most visited, but to be the most visited (using my logic
> above) you have to be listed in the first few pages.
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DirectHit claims that sites that rank highly and then don't
get clicked on get discriminated against more than usual,
and that sites that are buried that do get clicked on get a
bigger than normal boost in their popularity. This may be
so, but my major concerns are that (1) once they get 10
fairly decent sites into any particular top-10, the chance
of a better newcomer getting in is probably remove, and (2)
their system may be too easily spoofed.

They claim that they have safeguards against people trying
to manipulate their system, but that's just another "arms
race" situation. I'm sure that, for example, if 30 of us
got together and agreed to help each other out by doing a
single search a day (each time for a different conspirator),
drilling down and clicking on their URL, we could raise our
site's ratings.

Or a simple program that emulates a browser (including
downloading the graphics) that does drill-down queries.
Faking user behavior patterns is pretty easy. Run it from a
different IP address each time (just dial in via a national
ISP to a different modem bank each time) and you should be
able to spoof them pretty easily. Gee, there will be an
open-source version of Navigator soon. Wonder who'll be the
first to hack it to hack DirectHit?

Of course, being an ethical person, I would never do this.
But from a hacker's perspective, it's an interesting
challenge.

To my mind, the only ranking schemes that are resistant to
short-term manipulations are link popularity (ala
google.com) or show-me-the-money (ala goto.com)


==========================================================
Robert Woodhead, CEO, AnimEigo http://www.animeigo.com/
==========================================================
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Received on Mon Mar 08 1999 - 22:51:42 CST