Content Spoofing: A Question of Relevance
October 16, 2013
I heard an AAAS podcast about fake academic papers in open access publications. I did not catch much information from the 20 second sound bite. I navigated to Google and keyed this query:
aaas open access journals
The hit I sought was number eight on the search results page. What is interesting is that the current “hot” item ranked below older information. In one case, the hit was irrelevant to my intent filtered by Google’s behind-the-scenes personalization methods; for example, www.sciencemag.org. Another hit pointed to a couple of outdated studies dating in one case from 2005.
And Bing? Same query. No relevant hit on the first page of the Bing results list. What about that Bing off stuff? Maybe baloney?
And Yandex? Same query. No relevant hits on the first page of results.
And DuckDuckGo, the metasearch engine causing some to swoon? No relevant hit.
Thoughts:
- Timeliness is not a priority in the free Web indexing systems
- Access to rich media containing relevant information for a user’s query is NOT indexed. For all practical purposes, the podcasts are invisible without prior knowledge
- Junk results are not filtered by any of the systems.
No big deal for me. Just another example of how the simplest query can return some darned interesting results.
By the way, the Google results page include two ads, both from “traditional publishers.” One of the advertisers publishes commercial databases. My recollection is that some of the content in these information services could be viewed as incorrect. In fact, one of the Google advertisers accepted the bogus paper.
What’s my point?
The task of finding relevant, on point information is getting more difficult, not easier. Furthermore, as folks shift to “hectic” modes of work, the idea that most people will double check information before accepting it as gospel may be outmoded.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2013
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