Reflections on Search

Stephen's Lighthouse recommended The Google Dilemma several days ago. I finally got around to reading it, and heartily concur with the recommendation.

James Grimmelmann writes a very readable, interesting piece about some of the issues associated with how search engines organize the web for us, looking at some examples, including:

• Google bombing (getting enough people to link to a page using a specific phrase that it becomes one of the top results for that term) and whether these results are legitimate
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• Controversial sites and whether they should be allowed to stay on results pages even if they get there through these types of link manipulation (the 'yes' argument is summed up as "the computer did it"---the algorithm that ranks results should not be interfered with, and if enough people are linking with certain terms, Google isn't going to mess with the rankings)
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• Link farming, the ways that it can mess up search results, and whether it therefore makes sense for Google to interfere with the rankings in these cases (after all, these are not real people linking to sites)
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• How OK we are with it if some sites are kept off results pages in certain countries due to local laws (is it understandable or repellent and cowardly that Google's Chinese site censors search results according to China's laws?)
  

It's a very interesting look at search engines and how they shape our view of what's out there on the web (and why something needs to shape that view since the web, unmediated, is basically unusable chaos).