A Search Engine Designed For Spammers

from the that-sounds-perfectly-awful dept

With the rise of "search" as a viable market again, the last few months has seen a ridiculous rise in the number of new search engines out there, often make questionable claims. Some of them are fun to play around with, while some are just pointless. Most aren't particularly interesting (which is why we don't write about them here). However, the Inquirer is talking about a new search engine called AnooX that has an interesting strategy. Rather than work on any special ranking algorithm based on relevancy, they let users vote results up or down, with the idea being that the users will properly rank the results. They also claim to be non-profit, saying they want to minimize, not maximize, the fees paid by advertisers, and will share whatever profits with users. If you could come up with the perfect search engine for search engine spammers, this might be it. Those who have the most incentive to "spam" the search engine results (forcing their rankings up at the expense of other, more relevant sites) are much more likely to "vote" pages up in the rankings. Factoring in the ability to profit from participating, and you can rest assured that the site has created a perfect situation for those who actually believe the "work from home" spam emails they get to help you increase your own rankings. The site currently shows a search engine, but if you try to do an actual search, they say it won't launch for a few months -- though, they will accept your personal information to become a "voting member."