Search-Engine Conspiracy

[John Simkin]

Most people interested in the assassination of John F. Kennedy now use the web to do their research. It is claimed that since the arrival of Google search-engines can be trusted to rank websites in the order of relevance to the query. This is based on Google’s decision to place great emphasis on the number of websites linked to individual sites. Google class this as “peer-group” approval. This is a sensible approach, for example, people with an interest in the Kennedy assassination, are likely to give links to other websites that they have found useful in researching the subject.

Therefore, what happens if you type the “assassination of John F. Kennedy” into the Google search-engine. We are told there are 157,000 relevant websites. Ranked first is John Mcadams’ website. It is of course one of the few assassination websites that believes the conclusions of the Warren Commission. The second on the list is the NRA Assassination Records website. The third one is very surprising. It is a website in Germany that does not contain any information except a title page.

(1) http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

(2) http://www.archives.gov/research_room/jfk/

(3) http://www.jfk-assassination.de/

If you do a search of individuals involved in the investigation into the assassination you are likely to find Google take you to John Mcadams’ website.

If you type in “David Lifton” you discover that there are 22,900 relevant web pages on this subject. Ranked first is a page from John Mcadams’ website. This is in fact an article by Lifton with the title: “Is Jim Garrison Out of His Mind?” This page is linked to others on Mcadams website that of course an attempt to undermine Lifton’s theories on the assassination. My much more sympathetic account of Lifton’s theories is only ranked 4th.

(1) http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/lifton1.htm

(4) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKlifton.htm

One would therefore assume that there are more links to Mcadams page on Lifton than mine. There is in fact a website that allows you to check how many websites are linked to individual pages.

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

In fact this website shows that Google does not show any links to either page. Therefore, Google must be taken something else into account. Maybe it is the links to the home page of the respective websites.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/

This is also not the case. Mcadams has according to Google got 264 websites linked to his home page whereas I have 6,750. This situation is reflected in other search-engines: AltaVista (744/30,601); Hotbot (0/17,433); MSN (0/17,321)

There are obviously other factors search-engines are using to rank web pages. It would be interesting to hear how they would explain these results.

[Peter McGuire]

Most people interested in the assassination of John F. Kennedy now use the web to do their research. It is claimed that since the arrival of Google search-engines can be trusted to rank websites in the order of relevance to the query. This is based on Google’s decision to place great emphasis on the number of websites linked to individual sites. Google class this as “peer-group” approval. This is a sensible approach, for example, people with an interest in the Kennedy assassination, are likely to give links to other websites that they have found useful in researching the subject.

Therefore, what happens if you type the “assassination of John F. Kennedy” into the Google search-engine. We are told there are 157,000 relevant websites. Ranked first is John Mcadams’ website. It is of course one of the few assassination websites that believes the conclusions of the Warren Commission. The second on the list is the NRA Assassination Records website. The third one is very surprising. It is a website in Germany that does not contain any information except a title page.

(1) http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

(2) http://www.archives.gov/research_room/jfk/

(3) http://www.jfk-assassination.de/

If you do a search of individuals involved in the investigation into the assassination you are likely to find Google take you to John Mcadams’ website.

If you type in “David Lifton” you discover that there are 22,900 relevant web pages on this subject. Ranked first is a page from John Mcadams’ website. This is in fact an article by Lifton with the title: “Is Jim Garrison Out of His Mind?” This page is linked to others on Mcadams website that of course an attempt to undermine Lifton’s theories on the assassination. My much more sympathetic account of Lifton’s theories is only ranked 4th.

(1) http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/lifton1.htm

(4) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKlifton.htm

One would therefore assume that there are more links to Mcadams page on Lifton than mine. There is in fact a website that allows you to check how many websites are linked to individual pages.

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

In fact this website shows that Google does not show any links to either page. Therefore, Google must be taken something else into account. Maybe it is the links to the home page of the respective websites.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/

This is also not the case. Mcadams has according to Google got 264 websites linked to his home page whereas I have 6,750. This situation is reflected in other search-engines: AltaVista (744/30,601); Hotbot (0/17,433); MSN (0/17,321)

There are obviously other factors search-engines are using to rank web pages. It would be interesting to hear how they would explain these results.

[Michael Hogan]

Therefore, what happens if you type the “assassination of John F. Kennedy” into the Google search-engine. We are told there are 157,000 relevant websites. Ranked first is John Mcadams’ website. It is of course one of the few assassination websites that believes the conclusions of the Warren Commission. The second on the list is the NRA Assassination Records website. The third one is very surprising. It is a website in Germany that does not contain any information except a title page.

(3) http://www.jfk-assassination.de/

John, here is the website owner's explanation for why, in March 2004, you only saw a title page:

This assassination page was started in 1996 - four years after I read the first book. There were only a few web sites about the topic then - needless to say that the number of good and informative ones was even less. It is still very hard to get first hand evidence and sources about the assassination outside of the U.S. That's why I published the Warren Report and parts of its Hearings - about 100 testimonies and a few affidavits.

However, publishing a web site in 1996 in Germany meant that you need to find a provider. The internet was not very famous then, and »ISP« was an unknown acronym. Fortunately, my university allowed to publish the site on their server. So I started there and the site was a major success. Almost 10.000 people come here every month.

After leaving university, the site went unmaintained for about two years. Because it is still one of the major sites in the net, I moved it to an independent service provider, changed the design (once more) and re-published it in November 2001.

The site had a huge hit in November 2003, the 40th anniversary of JFK's death. An incredible number of people wanted to learn about the assassination. The traffic burst my budget and I had to take the site off the net. I'm terribly sorry about that but there was no other way. I started to re-design the site a few months later and it turned out to be a huge job. I decided to make all of the testimonies and affidavits available as well as a searchable interface to it. Every serious researcher should be able to go to my site and find the piece of information he desires along with its referencing scheme. It took three months but I finally got it.

Here are some facts about me for all the curious of you:

Name: Ralph Schuster

Age: 35 years

Profession: IT Manager

Residence: Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Homepage:

http://www.ralph-schuster.eu/

[Greg Parker]

John, I can't vouch for how accurate the information is, but this goes into some detail on how google rate webpages.

http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m...ent-summary.php

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Although sometimes demonstrated here, the McAdams site, at one time, had a considerable amount of "baiting", in which persons were repeatedly asked to "cite their source".

Also, along these lines:

http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/terms_of_service.html

"Posting or displaying Content on or through the Service, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt and publish such Content on the Service solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting the Service or any other Google Services. This license terminates when such Content is deleted from the Service. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, Posted or displayed by you on or through the Service and use that Content in connection with other services offered by Google. "

Which just happens to be a part of the reason why this site has had the benefit of seeing documents and works which have never been seen by the general public.

Even if one does have to tolerate those who chase multiple assassins, body kidnappers, and the followers of the late/great Jim Garrison smoke screen. Not to mention the big, bad ole US Government/CIA "did it" scenario's.

(That should light a few fires!)