Abstract :
The World Wide Web has become one of our more
important information sources, and commercial search
engines are the major tools for locating information;
however, it is not enough for a Web page to be indexed
by the search engines—it also must rank high on relevant
queries. One of the parameters involved in ranking
is the number and quality of links pointing to the page,
based on the assumption that links convey appreciation
for a page. This article presents the results of a content
analysis of the links to two top pages retrieved by
Google for the query “jew” as of July 2004: the “jew”
entry on the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and the
home page of “Jew Watch,” a highly anti-Semitic site.
The top results for the query “jew” gained public attention
in April 2004, when it was noticed that the “Jew
Watch” homepage ranked number 1. From this point on,
both sides engaged in “Googlebombing” (i.e., increasing
the number of links pointing to these pages). The results
of the study show that most of the links to these
pages come from blogs and discussion links, and the
number of links pointing to these pages in appreciation
of their content is extremely small. These findings have
implications for ranking algorithms based on link
counts, and emphasize the huge difference between
Web links and citations in the scientific community
