Knowing the Enemy

Researchers who are frustrated by the fact that search engine relevance rankings are so often skewed will benefit from a great piece in today’s Technology supplement of our local That is when we’re in Chennaipaper, the Hindu .
It summarizes quite accessibly an important piece on Web Spam Taxonomy by Zoltán Gyöngyi and Hector Garcia-Molina of Stanford University’s Computer Science Department.

As the journalist, D. Morali puts it this exhaustive research paper offers “the first comprehensive taxonomy of all important spamming techniques known to date.” Read up to get wiser.

He summarizes:
“Nothing in this paper is secret to the spammers; it is only most of the Web users who are unfamiliar with the techniques presented here.”
The authors believe that publicising spamming techniques can raise the awareness and interest of the research community.

What is also quite extraordinary is that a piece of this sophistication would be published in a general newspaperGood blog discussion at Search Engine Web. One cannot imagine a Canadian newspaper publishing anything like thisThe Hindu was also hailed yesterday in the English press as a pioneer in its appointment of a Readers’ Editor, along the lines pioneered by The Guardian.