Being Evil

Changing the rankings of web pages in the Bryn Mawr Search Engine

(Imagine the Mission Impossible theme music playing in the background)
Good Morning Mr. (Ms.) Phelps
(dramatic pause)
The home page for this course barely registers on the brynmawr.edu search engine! Your mission -- you have no choice but to accept it -- for the next two weeks will be to increase the ranking of the course related pages e http://cs.brynmawr.edu/cs380" . You might find some of the student presentation papers from October 3 helpful for this assignment.
If you are caught the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.
This web page will self destruct in 30 seaonds. (Imagine a cool/annoying Javascript thing which turns the whole page white)
Do
  1. Select two or more queries whose results you want to target for change. Some possible queries are:
    • search engine
    • information retrieval
    • towell search
    • search google
    • computer search
  2. Submit (via email) the queries you intend to target no later that October 27. I will respond no later than October 28 with a go ahead on your original suggestions or some minor variations thereon. (This is only so groups to do work on exactly the same queries.)
  3. Record the top 20 results for each query you target (assuming that there are 20 results)
  4. Manipulate web pages and links to so as to raise the ranking of the couse's web pages. If you need me to make changes to a page, I will do so, but only with specific instructions from you (e.g., here is a new version of page, please replace the existing one). Also, I will make at most one pudate per person per day. So ask me for changes wisely (and early).
  5. Record the top 20 results for each query
  6. Write up a detailed report, of what you tried, what you considered but did not try, what worked, what did not and why you believed that your manipulations worked (or did not work)
Submit electronically by October 27:
A list of the queries you propose to affect. (10 points)
Submit electronically by start of class November 7:
  1. A recording of the top 20 results for each target query before your efforts (5 points)
  2. The report defined above. (80 points)
  3. A recording of the top 20 results for each target query after your efforts. (5 points)
  4. (body) A list of the people you worked with. If you work with other people you should manipulate more search queries.

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