OT - Search engine question

George Patterson writes:

Jay Honeck wrote:
Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".
The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the
Cedar Rapids, IA airport!
How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid
advertisement, since it appears along with the rest of the search
results.
This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a
deliberate -- and annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the
search engine. Why doesn't the Iowa City Airport come up first?

Well, Yahoo *is* paid in different amounts by subscribers, and you can
see that Eastern Iowa Airport has paid to subscribe (note the
"category" tag). That's why they're at the top of the results list
despite having nothing to do with the search.

No accusation of "pay for placement" fraud has ever been substantiated
against any major search engine to my knowledge. Do you have any
evidence Yahoo is currently doing this? (They all distinguish
carefully between advertisements and search results).

I think the category tag just means they got a hit in the their
semi-manual directory; but that may well explain the high ranking.

I see nothing suspicious on the page suggesting the www.crairport.org
is a paid result. The results at the right and the two above it are
clearly labeled "sponsor results" and set off by a different
background and a rule.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, , http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
RKBA: http://noguns-nomoney.com/ http://www.dd-b.net/carry/
Pics: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/ http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/
Dragaera/Steven Brust: http://dragaera.info/

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

I think the problem really is that Yahoo isn't paying
enough attention to the location of the words relative to each other
on the page -- noting that the sequence "Iowa City" doesn't appear in
the source for that page *at all*!

It's worse than that. The word "city" doesn't occur on that page at all.

The only thing I can think of is this -- search engines work by building a
database of keywords and phrases that occur in documents. When you run a search,
they're looking in the database. I think the contents of that page changed and
the database has not.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:gbgUe.319519$_o.176759@attbi_s71...
Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".

The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
Rapids, IA airport!



Bottom line is:

If you use google, and type in "Iowa City Airport" in quotes (to preserve
searching for the phrase, not the individual words), then the top of the
list is the Alexis Park Inn's "Iowa City Airport History" page, just as you
would want and expect.

Bottom line is:

If you use google, and type in "Iowa City Airport" in quotes (to preserve
searching for the phrase, not the individual words), then the top of the
list is the Alexis Park Inn's "Iowa City Airport History" page, just as
you would want and expect.

Actually, I want the Iowa City Airport to be listed first, ahead of the
Cedar Rapids Airport -- without the stupid quotations marks that maybe
0.001% of the population knows to use.

*Then* our history page could be listed, but (in real life) our FBO might be
listed next?

Search engines drive me nuts.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 04:21:41 GMT, Jay Honeck wrote:

Actually, I want the Iowa City Airport to be listed first, ahead of the
Cedar Rapids Airport -- without the stupid quotations marks that maybe
0.001% of the population knows to use.

hopefully they don't go back and redesign the net to acomodate the other
99% idiots. Besides, google gains too much influence, IMHO. Even Cerf is
now working there.

#m

--
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed,
most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we
come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
-- Nathaniel Borenstein

First hit on Excite is http://www.icgov.org/airport.htm. Excite
compiles and sorts the search engines in order of relevance.

Bush

On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:34:04 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".

The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
Rapids, IA airport!

How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement, since
it appears along with the rest of the search results.

This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate -- and
annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why doesn't
the Iowa City Airport come up first?

Jay,

FWIW: I went to clusty.com and your hotel was number 1 on the list.

Hilton


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:gbgUe.319519$_o.176759@attbi_s71...
Go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Airport".

The first choice that comes up is "Eastern Iowa Airport" -- the Cedar
Rapids, IA airport!

How do they *do* that? It doesn't appear to be a paid advertisement,
since
it appears along with the rest of the search results.

This kind of stuff drives me crazy, since it seems to be a deliberate --
and
annoyingly successful -- attempt to "spoof" the search engine. Why
doesn't
the Iowa City Airport come up first?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

FWIW: I went to clusty.com and your hotel was number 1 on the list.

Well, that's cool -- but wrong.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"