The unhealthy priorities of search engines

Search engines are being challenged to come up with more effective ways of searching.

Since most surfs into cyberspace begin with a word or phrase in Google or one of the other search engines, the search and classification methods used make all the difference in the world to the value or otherwise of the internet experience.

People searching the web for information on suicide, for example, are more likely to find sites encouraging them to do it than offering them support, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.

Using 12 simple suicide related terms and four different search engines, researchers found that the three most frequently occurring sites were all pro-suicide sites which, in the words of Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity Sane, 'are preying on vulnerable and lonely people'.

Although it is illegal under the Suicide Act of 1961 to aid, abet, or incite someone to kill themselves, pro-suicides sites are not banned in the UK.

Lead researcher Lucy Biddle called on internet service providers to pursue strategies that would increase the chances of sites offfering support to people considering suicide appear first in searches.

Similar concerns have been raised about sites that appear to promote anorexia or plastic surgery as lifestyles.

Malehealth has experienced problems of its own. 'Our search engine presence is OK,' said site editor Jim Pollard, 'but given that we're still pretty much unique in that we're independent, aspiring to be comprehensive and aimed directly at men, it ought to be better.

'One of the problems is that search engines uses links to explore sites and to rank them. The more links the better. We have links but they're only to decent sites we feel comfortable with. We could link to Uncle Tom Cobbley and all and boost our search engine presence at a stroke. But it wouldn't do our readers any good or the site's integrity. There must be a better way to generate search results.'