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20 years ago, Sergey and Larry used the scientific publishing idea of tracking citations to determine document importance and built a better search engine. When

20 years ago, Sergey and Larry used the scientific publishing idea of tracking citations to determine document importance and built a better search engine. When people realized that links mattered more than anything, they started spamming links all over the place and the SEO battles began. Glad to see that the scientists have caught up.

314 8y ago
They were certainly doing it 20 years ago. I can think of a professor who was caught in my department doing exactly this. In this case, as back then, I doubt any sanctions will be taken as although the professor is cheating the system: his employer benefits from the deception.
geofft 8y ago
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- alberto_ol 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
sytelus 8y ago
In reality PageRank is surprisingly resistant to such effort. The SEO typically involves bit of social engineering and hacking (example convience well known website to link you or spam the comments of unpatched blog engine). The h-index, the measure used by researchers, is surprisingly gamable on other hand. For example, two researchers can buddy up and self cite each other few hundred publications in junk journals with DOI and will suddenly become the most prominent scientist of all time. It is mind boggling that even Google Scholar doesn’t use pagerank.
- InGodsName 8y ago
  It was easier to trick PageRank back in time. Today, they cross validate the search results against DNS queries in a specific region and from their tracking scripts embeded in pages too. They are getting a lot of data from ISP, Wifi access points, their own 8.8.8.8 DNS service, and even their mobile operator project fi. So, even if you manage to trick the linking part, you'll not pass their other filters. It's much harder now but still doable provided someone is willing to foot the bill for such an operation.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  If you're talking about PageRank anno 2018, then you're talking about two decades worth of research fighting back against gaming SEOs. I wouldn't use say the resulting resistance is all that surprising.
  - sytelus 8y ago
    My point was gaming score using self citations. This is almost trivial with h-index and much more difficult with PageRank. PageRank is superior in resistance compared to h-index.
yholio 8y ago
The graph of PageRank is fundamentally different from academic citations because it allows for cycles and that allows the algorithm to converge. Papers cannot cite future papers, so you are left with trying to value older papers from a number of newer citations of unknown quality, by essentially counting them. Until enough citations become available, the quality of the new work is usually proxied by the prestige of the journal, which in turn make these papers more wide read, influential and cited, and this perverse power drives the whole train wreck of academic publishing.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Scientists were gaming citations before SEO.
SubiculumCode 8y ago
This article's subject does not match the practices of the field.

314 8y ago

They were certainly doing it 20 years ago. I can think of a professor who was caught in my department doing exactly this. In this case, as back then, I doubt any sanctions will be taken as although the professor is cheating the system: his employer benefits from the deception.

geofft 8y ago

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

alberto_ol 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

sytelus 8y ago

In reality PageRank is surprisingly resistant to such effort. The SEO typically involves bit of social engineering and hacking (example convience well known website to link you or spam the comments of unpatched blog engine). The h-index, the measure used by researchers, is surprisingly gamable on other hand. For example, two researchers can buddy up and self cite each other few hundred publications in junk journals with DOI and will suddenly become the most prominent scientist of all time. It is mind boggling that even Google Scholar doesn’t use pagerank.

InGodsName 8y ago
It was easier to trick PageRank back in time. Today, they cross validate the search results against DNS queries in a specific region and from their tracking scripts embeded in pages too. They are getting a lot of data from ISP, Wifi access points, their own 8.8.8.8 DNS service, and even their mobile operator project fi. So, even if you manage to trick the linking part, you'll not pass their other filters. It's much harder now but still doable provided someone is willing to foot the bill for such an operation.
vanderZwan 8y ago
If you're talking about PageRank anno 2018, then you're talking about two decades worth of research fighting back against gaming SEOs. I wouldn't use say the resulting resistance is all that surprising.
- sytelus 8y ago
  My point was gaming score using self citations. This is almost trivial with h-index and much more difficult with PageRank. PageRank is superior in resistance compared to h-index.

yholio 8y ago

The graph of PageRank is fundamentally different from academic citations because it allows for cycles and that allows the algorithm to converge. Papers cannot cite future papers, so you are left with trying to value older papers from a number of newer citations of unknown quality, by essentially counting them. Until enough citations become available, the quality of the new work is usually proxied by the prestige of the journal, which in turn make these papers more wide read, influential and cited, and this perverse power drives the whole train wreck of academic publishing.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

Scientists were gaming citations before SEO.

SubiculumCode 8y ago

This article's subject does not match the practices of the field.