The European Audiovisual Observatory has just published its latest IRIS plus entitled: Search Engines: Seek and Ye Shall Find? The Position of Search Engines in Law
The use of search engines as a means of finding and accessing information on the internet has become so much a part of everyday communication, that the verb "to Google" now exists in reference works such as the Oxford English Dictionary. In this new publication, author Nico van Eijk presents us with an extremely accessible introduction to the functioning of search engines. He then goes on to tackle the more complex issues of the regulation of search engines in the eyes of European and international law.
The manipulation of search results given by a search engine is explored in the first part of this report. Van Eijk explains that the order in which you receive the search results can be changed by the fact that the highest positions in any given search result can be offered to paying customers. Priority-indexing of web pages is also offered to those willing to pay. A website owner can therefore literally `buy his way up the list.'
Search results can also be manipulated by website owners themselves. The report demonstrates that this can be done by adding attractive search words to your site which are unrelated to its content but which will nevertheless guarantee a high placing in any search list. This practice, known as spamdexing, is judged to be so vital in improving web presence that companies known as SEOs' - search engine optimisers - are doing a roaring trade in improving their clients' internet site traffic using such methods. Hackers are also able to manipulate search results through a process known as "Google-bombing" which involved linking certain search terms to completely unrelated items for a joke or in order to make a social statement.
This report then goes behind the scenes of the financing of search engines' business structures and explains how they obtain their principle revenue through advertising. Most search engines sell advertising space on their own websites and clients are charged according to the number of times their advertisement is "clicked". However, it is also possible for search engines to place advertisements for clients on third parties' websites and to receive payment for this service.
Finally, we are given a thorough analysis of the position of search engines in the eyes of current legislation. The report states that "the search engine does not have a place in law" as neither the "Television Without Frontiers" Directive, the European Framework Directive, the E-Commerce Directive nor even EU competition law currently provide an adequate legal framework for the regulation of search engines and their functions. Nico van Eijk recommends that "Partly in view of the major social dimension of search engines, it is desirable that legal and multi-disciplinary research be launched on national and international scales" as well as giving certain pointers for a beginning of legislation in this field.
An accessible and detailed analysis of search engines: their functioning, their business methods and their current position within the eyes of the law.
http://www.obs.coe.int/about/oea/pr/irisplus0206.html
