Links

October 8, 2008’s reading for com 430z was titled “The role of expertise in navigating links of influence” by Eszter Hargittai, which was published in 2008 in Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui (Ed), The hyperlinked society: questioning connections in the digital age.

This reading focuses on links and the involvement of content producers and users on the internet. Links are the most popular way to navigate on the web, and the Hargittai suggests that the awareness and knowledge of internet users can help them direct themselves through these links. Knowing how search engines work, especially one’s personal favorite, can help users avoid all the clutter on the web and get to where they want to be. Knowledge will also help you if you are a content producer. You need to know your audience and how knowledgeable they are with the web. The author basically says to do your homework, more specifically in these areas: general user savvy, users’ understanding of search engins rankings, and users’ understanding of links in e-mails. She then shares what she has learned so far.

Hargittai also explains how search engines work and he provides a brief history of how search engines first operated. Search engines would use the operator “or” to find relative sites. In other words, the engine would only bring up sites for at least one of the terms entered in by the user. Now, they search by using the operator “and”, which includes all terms entered by the user. This obviously brings about a significantly larger amount of hits, and makes it harder to find what you are looking for.

In conclusion I think this is a very helpful topic, especially nowadays. Breaking through all of the clutter is proving to be more of a challenge every day. I also agree that most people don’t even realize, or take the time to think about, how these search engines really work. I know I didn't. I would aslo like to add that I believe that the Hargittai did a good job of explaining it, especially with the most popular ones like Google, Yahoo, Digg, and Riddet.