Principles Of Searching Reading Discussion
- 1. “The Searching Quagmire”Paid placement: advertising that is outside of the editorial content of the search resultsPaid inclusion: advertising within the editorial content of the search resultsPaid submission is the practice of requiring payment to speed up the processing of a listing Spamdexing: manipulation of metatags and text by Webmasters
- 2. Misconceptions That Lead us AstrayThe whole Web is crawledAll search engines search the same set of Web pagesAND should find more results than ORAll search engines work the sameSearch engines search the actual page at the time of searching“Advanced” features (i.e. Boolean queries), are the best way to search and will get you everything that is relevant to your questionDirectories and search engines are the same thing
- 3. How do search engines determine ranking?Popularity of the site (indicated by number of links to it)Link analysis (if more pages point to a site, then those pointers represent “selections” by real experts on a topic)Collaborative filtering (the choices others with the same query have made)Exceptions to popularity (new sites have fewer links to them)Boosting ranking by type of siteSources of search engine revenues (pay-for-ranking)Information skewing Metadata and classification schemesContext and personalization
- 4. What should we do?Know the identity of the metadata sourceIdentify that a source can be trustedMonitor and publicize the behavior of Web information or metadata sources over time
- 5. Establishing and Maintaining Trust in Online SystemsTrust and quality are tightly connectedConsumers want information that is accurate, relevant, and timelyData is constantly changingHow do you know if content is trustworthy?Look for spelling and grammar errorsLook for citations of facts and statistics
- 6. Continued…Web sites should be easy to navigateInformation should download quicklyAuthor should be clearly identifiedInclude an e-mail link to the WebmasterThink about sponsorship.gov, .edu, .comLinks should not be out of dateCurrency is one of the most important factors in information quality
- 7. Continued …Look at the stated goals and objectives of the websiteStability/staying powerThe style should be consistent with the subject content
- 8. Discussion QuestionsHow do you judge a website? What is the most important criteria to you? What is the least important?Does your judgment change when the website is academic? Government? Commercial?How much do you trust the information a search engine gives you? Does it matter to you, whether it is skewed or not?