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A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

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mouser:
You know this thread has suggested a really interesting idea.
What about a web service or local browser addon/tool which simply did this:

when you type in a search, it lets google do the search, and then collects all of the results,
and then re-scores and re-ranks them based on a scoring heuristic that you can tune.

i would suggest that one of the most interesting scoring heuristics that i would be interested in configuring for myself is to penalize the scores of all pages/sites with ads on them.

now that would be a generally useful and fascinating thing, and you wouldn't be discarding sites as much as you would be simply re-ranking them, in case you don't happen to believe that google's algorithm is god.

Curt:
, in case you don't happen to believe that google's algorithm is god. -mouser (May 05, 2007, 02:58 AM)
--- End quote ---



I think God is good, but I am not too sure if Google's algorithm is god...  ;)

zridling:
How'd that advertising work out for DIGG this past week? How about PC World? And don't forget Google helps China censor the hell out of the internet. Another thing that's sad is that even though Google is one of the richest, most profitable companies in history, it demanded a $165 million no-tax TIF from North Carolina for its server farms. In other words, citizens are free to pay all the taxes they want, while Google is free not to give one dime back to the community.

App is right, Google's not a bad company, warts and all. But this kind of corporate "citizenship" is fugly.

onyx:
The concept of a re-ranking system is good, but unfortunately reality is knocking once again.  Most search engine companies have strict policies on "scraping" their pages.  I suppose if it was just for "personal use" you could get away with it, but if it was used as the basis for a publicly available search site I think Google would step in.

Systems like Scroogle could be considered proxies that simply convey the information on the page through to the end user.  Yes, Scroogle is stripping away the cookies but the content is still being passed through in its entirety.  Since Google's lifeblood involves those ads, they basically ignore it.

app103:
I finally remembered why I stopped using Copernic for web searches.


* It's too slow.

* Even though you have paid for it, you still get hit with ad links. This bothers me considering what they charge for the pro version. ($79.95!)

* You don't get that many results for things you should get plenty of results for when doing a general web search. There was only 50 results for 'free programming ebooks' using the default settings and not one of them was my site...but there was 5 for digg.
It's really only good for some very specialized searches, and even then it's very limited.

For example: if you are going to do a search that is programming related, this is where your results are going to come from. If it's not here, you won't get it:


Software reviews? The ones from DC will never show up with this specialized search that only uses these sources:


You want to search newsgroups for something? You only get results from Topica and Yahoo groups.

Now keep in mind that I am using their best version...the super expensive pro version. It's probably much worse if you are using the free one.

Copernic may have been good at one time, before Google became popular, but not any more.  :(


Systems like Scroogle could be considered proxies that simply convey the information on the page through to the end user.  Yes, Scroogle is stripping away the cookies but the content is still being passed through in its entirety.  Since Google's lifeblood involves those ads, they basically ignore it.
-onyx (May 05, 2007, 07:21 AM)
--- End quote ---

Scroogle does NOT contain Google ads. They are thrown out of the results you get.

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