Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives

Suggestions needed for non-personalized web searches of campus


From: "James H. Moore" <jhmiso () RIT EDU>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:42:24 -0400

I have been using Google alerts to find drug back linking on websites.  It started to become less effective a couple of 
years ago.  My suspicion is that Google's algorithms are getting more personalized ( for discussion see:  The Filter 
Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You by Eli 
Parise<http://www.amazon.com/Eli-Pariser/e/B004W4ERWM/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1>r)  In any case, since I rarely search for 
viagra or cialis, when I use Google Alerts search RIT for viagra or cialis, I get no hits.  But today, a colleague, 
running the same set of Google Alerts did get a hit. Grrr.

All of this is driven by "relevance" calculations.  Anyone know a way to get around relevance in search engines (Google 
especially)?  Of do I bite the bullet and use my own web spider for our website.


Jim
- - - -
Jim Moore, CISSP, IAM, ITIL Foundations
Senior Information Security Forensic Investigator
Rochester Institute of Technology
151 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623-5603
(585) 475-5406 (office)
(585) 255-0809 (Cell - Incident Reporting & Emergencies)
(585) 475-7920 (fax)


If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late.  Miyamoto Musashi, Japanese philosopher/samurai, 1645

A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for.  John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic, 1928

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