(OT) BATFE is #1 Model Rocket Site

Looks like someone's been "seeding" the search engine.

I was shown a trick in 1998 where an aquantence showed me how he had seeded the search engines so that when someone typed in "sh1tt1ng and p1$$1ng" his competitors website came up to the top.

That was good for lots of laughs, but can be used for nafarious purposes as well.

seeding is used to be competitive in search engines for e-commerce websites and people pay big bucks to those that know how to do it.

The real question is the BATF seeding their site to be #1 for rockets or is a prankster doing it ?

Or the Google search that returns this page:

Probably something like that. Other directories (Open Directory Project) use databases of sites submitted by owners or users and the databases are maintained by actual human editors precisely to prevent seeding and ensure that "Mom and Dad's Homepage" does have some content related to the category it's in and is not just a herbal viagra site.

Google says they integrate their search technology with directory pages to establish ranking order within the directory, but don't really say how a site gets included within a particular directory category in the first place;

DISCLAIMER: "Pay for Rank", etc, search engines are a pet peeve of mine. In my idealistic world, the Internet is an information and communication system, not a shopping channel. Corrupting search results on the Internet, for what ever reason, is an ethical issue to me akin to purposely corrupting the indexes of an encyclopedia or the card catalog of a library.

"# If you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq."

HEY BB,

Thanks for the laugh!

Patrick - I'd fly my rockets if Lexington wasn't crawling with soccer moms and minivans!

lexington: middle class soccer mom heaven......BURP.............. shockie B)

all soccer moms and their soccer play>

Yeah, that's nauseating all right. It comes up first because when Google takes its directory information from ODP and then displays a particular category, it rearranges the alphabetic order the category was listed in when it was created by the ODP editor, rearranging it so that what Google thinks are the most relevant sites are at the top. Google's "Page Rank" technology uses an algorithm based in large part (but not entirely) on judging a page's relevance by how many other pages link to it. It used to work pretty well, but a couple of years or so ago I noticed its reliability was dropping (when using Google's search engine--which is not the same as its directory--I now sometimes go through pages of junk results before finding the best site on a topic). Guess this is just more proof that Google is slipping. Sad.

-- Pull MYFINGER to e-mail me

We've lost too many good launch fields to soccer. NIRA used one field for over 20 years, when NO ONE was ever there. We provided our own insurance. The park district paid $60,000 for insurance for their soccer program. Then we got kicked out when a soccer mom went ballistic when an Alpha parachuted down too close to her kids game. Not pranged. Parachuted.

Every time I see a minivan with one of those soccer stickers on it, I want to send a photon torpedo up its tailpipe.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

I agree!

their product at this site tells people how to do it. this is the document I was shown in 98. of course it changes every month, to keep up with the changes on the search engines.

I am not endorsing it, just providing the source