Hi All,
I got this in my mailbox this morning and don't know quite what to think. I
regularly use "less than perfect sites" as tools for instruction relating to
evaluation. I have a page set up clearly for that purpose. A search engine
optimizer wrote to request I remove a link because with Google's link
relevancy rankings, the more links a site has, the higher it appears as a
result. It seems to me that's a teachable moment as well, though I know
that not all Google users have had librarians and teachers to guide them in
their choices. What do you think?
**************************
Here's the letter:
I am a Search Engine Optimizer, which means specialize in making sure that
sites rank highly for certain keywords.
Recently I was researching a project with my 8-year-old son when I came
across the site www.martinlutherking.org. This site is a racist site, which
you know because you are using it a class about misinformation on the web.
What you may not know is that by linking to this site, you are helping this
site to rank higher on Google. Google judges sites on how many people link
to a particular site. The more people that link, the higher the site will
come up on Google’s results.
Your site currently links to [ http://www.martinlutherking.org
]www.martinlutherking.org. I would like to ask you to deactivate that link.
While I admire the fact that you are teaching people to recognize sites
with bad information, you are also helping this site to spread its
disinformation to thousand of other people. Please deactivate the link with
either a space in the URL or some other method so that this site will fall
to the wayside.
<html><DIV>Joyce Kasman Valenza, Librarian
Springfield Township High School
techlife@school Philadelphia Inquirer
Phone: (215) 233-6030 ext: 2502
Fax: (215) 836-5237
Virtual Library: http://mciu.org/~spjvweb
http://joycevalenza.com</html>
_________________________________________________________________
Working moms: Find helpful tips here on managing kids, home, work — and
yourself. http://special.msn.com/msnbc/workingmom.armx
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