Search Engines and Algorithms: New Social Search - AnooX, Explaining and Testing
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How AnooX Works
Initially, the AnooX machine generates the search results using proprietary crawlers and indexers. “At this stage AnooX search results are very good, on par with Yahoo! or Google,” they say. Then, you sign up with AnooX as a voting member. As a voting member, one may vote for any site within the search results.
AnooX search results are continuously improved based on the majority vote of the members, across the nearly infinite number of keywords that are possible, based on the most democratic model of one individual person’s vote; or one vote per keyword; in theory, that is.
Testing Out AnooX
Is there discernment among multiple votes? How are these “results” determined to be objective? Even in our own government democracy, limits have to be made on how many votes are allowed per person, and so must the same be done for a “democratic” search engine; whether it’s decided per person, per IP, or whatever the criteria for establishing a unique identity. What steps does AnooX take to ensure that the votes are objective?
Out of curiosity, I signed up and attempted to manipulate the search results. AnooX attempts to verify your identity before allowing you to vote by either a credit card, or by a notarized copy of your photo ID mailed in. While usually people only have one photo ID, so this could be reasonably secure; but verifying your identity with a credit card is not necessarily an exclusively secure option. I, for one, have several credit cards, some still have old addresses attached to them, and since I just got married, I have two names I could use, and with the ten new Visa Gift Cards I received as wedding gifts, I technically could be anyone I wanted to be. In this way unscrupulous individuals that want to manipulate the search engine results in the first place have several ways available to them to do it easily. For the purpose of proving my point, I signed up for three different accounts, and was totally able to do so.
In my humble opinion, anyone could influence these search results, and they would not be in any way objective. And certainly, if I can come up with a simple method of manipulating the results, since I’m not technically clever or have a criminal mindset, how many other holes in this method could conceivably be created by those who are and those who do?
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