[WikiEN-l] Long-term searchability of the internet

[David Gerard]

On 15 January 2011 04:41, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:

> To take a specific example, I very occasionally come across names of
> people or topics where it is next-to-impossible to find out anything
> meaningful about them because the name is identical to that of someone
> else. Sometimes this is companies that name themselves after something
> well-known and any search is swamped by hits to that well-known
> namesake. Other times, it is someone more famous swamping a relatively
> o bscure person - a recent example I found here is the physicist Otto
> Klemperer. Despite having the name and profession, it is remarkably
> difficult to find information about the physicist as opposed to the
> composer. If I had a birth year, it would be much easier, of course.


This effect happened long before Wikipedia. One example from my
experience: it was only since Wikipedia that I could find out anything
on the Internet about the dazzle ships - the camouflage paintwork used
on ships in World War I - as opposed to pages and pages about the OMD
album.

Then there's the huge bias in Google hits toward computer-related uses
of any term whatsoever. What's the first hit on "putty"? Not the
construction filler - the whole first page of hits is for an obscure
(though very good) piece of computer software.

The effect you describe is part of why search is a hard problem. At
least we can say we've alleviated it slighty!


- d.