[svlug] Google comes to BALUG on Tue. Sept. 15

[Don Marti]

On Sun, Sep 13, 1998 at 08:15:09PM -0700, Mark Willey wrote:

> Question: is it ethical to coach people on how to artificially raise
> their search engine ratings? 

The algorithm that Google uses for weighting pages makes all these
"search engine games" based on meta tags obsolete.  AFAIK Google
ignores meta tags.  Thank God.  In order to rank high with Google, you
actually have to get people to link to your site.

I just did a Google search on

operating system sucks

and I got 2 results: first, the "Operating System Sucks-Rules-O-Meter"
and second, a company called "Apple Computer" at www.apple.com) That's
because Google counts the link text that other people use to point to
your page.  If somebody puts

<a href="http://www.apple.com">cute case but the operating system
sucks</a>

on a web page, Google associates the words inside the anchor tags with
the target page even if they don't appear on that page.

> I think a great idea for search engines is having an option that says
> "Do not list sites which based on a heuristic, appear to be packing the
> stats."  IE and site that has "mp3 warez nude cheerleader linux windows
> gay teen drugs download spanking" would NOT be listed!

Damn!  I want to check that site out!  Except the "windows" parts of
course.  I hope they have live nude teen cheerleader Linux warez chat
rooms.  What's the URL?

-- 
Don Marti                                       Electric Lichen L.L.C.
whois DM683                                 -rwxr--r-- Harrison Street
dmarti at electriclichen.com                San Francisco, California USA

--
echo "unsubscribe svlug" | mail majordomo at svlug.org
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ to unsubscribe