in reply to The Web is Set Up All Wrong

You're proposing then, that web developers make it easy to distinguish ads from content, so that search engines can return content rather than ads. You're also proposing that search engines redesign themselves to take advantage of these clues. But much of the trouble comes already from situations where developers of poor quality content with lots of ads try to seed search engines to return their pages with higher priority. You will always have people with incentive to try to game the system. Those people don't have much incentive to follow rules. Do you have any suggestion how to deal with that issue? Because I see that as the primary issue.


Dave

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Re^2: The Web is Set Up All Wrong
by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Apr 20, 2011 at 19:16 UTC

    "...You're proposing then, that web developers make it easy to distinguish ads from content, so that search engines can return content rather than ads..."

    Let me say that I'd be happy if the search engine results returned relevant results rather than junk. I see this as a protocol/toolset problem akin to spam. Once upon a time people said that spam could never be beaten. We were doomed to read e-mails about Viagara until Hades opened popsicle stands, but someone build a neato tool called a spam filter. Now we still get spam, but it is tolerable.

    "...You will always have people with incentive to try to game the system..."

    There are always going to be people who will try to break into my car. Does that mean I should purchase a car without locks next time?

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