Re: AltaVista Testing Paid Search Results

From: Ian Douglas <ian_at_zti.co.za>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 14:51:53 -0500 (CDT)

DAVID YANCEY WROTE:
>The real problem with such a change is of course for the
>consumer, already frustrated in the attempt to find web
>pages and resources, who would now be confronted with a
>prevalence of paid and not necessarily useful or even
>relevant listings, on top of the old mess of often
>completely useless or uninteresting search results. Using a
>search engine would be like going to a public library and
>having to wade through the yellow pages before being allowed
>access to the card catalogue, which has meanwhile been
>stuffed by the contents of the waste basket.
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Hi All,

Odd that you mentioned libraries.... My own 'brilliant idea'
for solving the search problem is to implement a kind of
Dewey Decimal Number (DDN) system for the web. Each web page
could have a meta-tag with a DDN in it, indicating the
precise topic(s) that the web page is about. A suitable
engine could then index these and allow the resulting
database to be searched.

Problems: 1. Sites deliberately mis-categorising their
content to boost their hits.

2. The page may include a paragraph or so which may be
relevant for someone actually looking for stuff under a
different classification. The lack of keyword indexing means
he won't find it.

3. How do you persuade millions of web authors to adopt this
standard?

4. The existing Dewey Decimal Number system will likely need
to be expanded and refined for the web. It would be nice if
this could be done by a standards body like W3C.

5. If they made it a standard, then (3) may fall away and
all engines could start indexing according to the DDNs.

6. New career paths for librarians are a possibility :-)

(1) Would need some kind of report-and-ban system, maybe a
3-strikes-and-you're-out approach from the engines? As
always, volumes are a problem....

My gut says this idea is worth a fortune, regret I don't
have the bucks to implement it myself....


Cheers, Ian

--------------------------------------------------------------
ian@zti.co.za http://www.zti.co.za
Zero to Infinity - A new kind of net company
Phone/Fax +27-21-948-3809


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Received on Wed Apr 21 1999 - 15:46:44 CDT