Links

Here are some links to some other interesting things on the web.

MSR -- my new employer

UCLA -- my alma mater

Dave -- my friend

Liesl and Jeremy's Wedding! -- Coming soon!

"Sponsored" Links

Below are various links I was asked to put here. I include them partially to spur you, gentle reader, on just what this means for reputation systems. Advertisers and search engines are in an arms race, improving and undermining metrics for search relevance. Ashish Goel recently came here to MSR to give an interesting talk on the topic. His work centers on trying to tell when a single content provider produces a large number of "fake" sites that point to their own content, artifically increasing relevance.

But what do we do when "normal" people start putting links on their own pages? How can a search engine possibly know my intent when I say...

Check out these fine sites!

(none here right now!)

Can a search engine know the difference between my link and one from someone who is linking to them in a more semantically relevant way? Almost certainly not. Indeed, the links above might be given higher relevance by the fact that this text surrounds them, rather than being on a long page of links! Ironic.

Jeremy Elson