Re: Alta Vista re Hard Core Porn

Hi Ken,

>I may be wrong about this but I don't believe it is just an AltaVista
>problem. All search engines index sites by computers. And computers are
>not sophisticated enough to distinguish between a porn site and a recipe
>for chicken breasts.

Some of them are smart enough to not link to a site using certain 
words--even innocent sites using the wrong words--like exotic. I just 
read that last night in a new GREAT search engine info site called 
searchengineworld.com where his own site was outlawed for using that 
word.

>Directories such as Yahoo -- on the other hand --
>are human creations and you will find them to be far more "family
>friendly."

I'm aware of that.

>You are right to avoid search engines if their search results make you
>uncomfortable. As for me, I have no problem doing my own censoring. If
>AltaVista did *not* return sex sites in their results, I would be
>suspicious that they might be censoring other sites for political,
>religious, or commercial reasons.

I don't mind doing my own censoring. It is the kids I'm worried 
about--looking for a place to post their poetry and WHAM!!

I can certainly understand that they can't prevent the listing but 
the thing that upsets me is AltaVista won't remove it after they are 
made aware of it. Other sites let people write in and report porn 
sites. AltaVista obviously doesn't care about what happens to little 
kids and that is SAD!!

BTW, I have been very dissapointed in AltaVista for months now since 
they changed their search results and how they gather info. There is 
now one more reason to use another search engine.

Lori

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA