Google, Yahoo Not Highlighting Good Stuff?

Category internet, Business | Permalink | 3. April 2007

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Researchers are trying to figure out how to make more of the good stuff float to the top of Internet search engines and keep more of the bad stuff buried.

At Queensland University of Technology in Australia, Professor Audun Josang is trying to come up with a system through which search engines would rank Web sites based on their reputation, based in part on input from the broad Internet community of users.

Sites that try to hook visitors via phishing scams, for instance, could be outed by users in a “social control” system and search engines could be notified, he said. “Just because a Web site ranks highly on a search engine doesn’t mean it’s a good Web site,” he said in a statement. “In fact, highly ranked Web sites can be malicious.” The current Web page rankings are too easily manipulated, he said.

“I think in the future reputation systems, integrated into search engines, can be used to weed out such Web sites by giving them a low ranking and thereby making them invisible to unsuspecting users,” Josang said in a statement. Where’s the science?

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