From: jo...@mcs.com (Jorn Barger)
Subject: Is HotBot selling rankings?
Date: 1998/07/23
Message-ID: <1dcmisq.vs8j1g1gp4hy4N@jorn.pr.mcs.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 374286390
Organization: The Responsible Party (conservative left)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.search

I switched from AltaVista to HotBot recently, because the numbers looked
better, but the results I get there are starting to look suspiciously
like preferential ratings for paying websites.

Is there a list of search sites that do this, so I can avoid them?


Also, what happened to Rankdex?  I've had to switch to Google, but I
really still don't trust its opaque ranking system.


-- 
I EDIT THE NET: <URL:http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblogs/weblog.html>
"This is a cave to the military establishment, to the secret army which
is one step away from the secret police."-fired CNN producer Jack Smith

From: y...@cs.buffalo.edu (Yanhong Li)
Subject: Re: Is HotBot selling rankings?
Date: 1998/07/24
Message-ID: <6paf2q$k9$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 374566213
References: <1dcmisq.vs8j1g1gp4hy4N@jorn.pr.mcs.net>
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Computer Science
NNTP-Posting-User: yli
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.search

In article <1dcmisq.vs8...@jorn.pr.mcs.net>,
Jorn Barger <jo...@mcs.com> wrote:
>I switched from AltaVista to HotBot recently, because the numbers looked
>better, but the results I get there are starting to look suspiciously
>like preferential ratings for paying websites.
>
>Is there a list of search sites that do this, so I can avoid them?
>
>
>Also, what happened to Rankdex?  I've had to switch to Google, but I
>really still don't trust its opaque ranking system.
>

Hi -

I am the inventor of Rankdex, I left the company about a year ago, as
far as I now, the Rankdex index was never updated since I left. GARI
Software which hosted Rankdex is now part of Dow Jones, no one is
responsible for Rankdex anymore. Dow Jones may still own the patent,
if it is approved, but anything could happen.

If you are interested, a detailed technical paper on Rankdex was 
recently published in IEEE Internet Computing, July/August issue, the
title of the paper is

Towards a Qualitative Search Engine

If you donot have access to that Journal, I can send you electronic
copies.

Yanhong Li
yan...@infoseek.com