Cite Search

An Idea for Google 

 

Other Rants and Raves

26 September 2004

Dear Google, 

Here's an idea for a new service that might also provide Google with information to improve search result ranking. I call it Cite Search.

Allow me to register one of my web pages with Google Cite Search. You search the web for other web pages that have quoted parts of my registered web page and periodically send me email with links to those sites. Then I, as the original content owner, can go to those sites to see if they correctly give me credit as the author.

Of course the result of a Cite Search is not perfect, but I could look for people who are stealing my content without attribution. In fact, you could even provide me a graphical map of the places you find my content. If the map was interactive I could investigate those sites that you report to me and click on one to indicate "was not really my content, remove this site from my Citation list". I could also click to indicate "Correctly attributes to me" or "Does not attribute to me" or "Licensed from me" or ...

You, as Google, also get information that I think I'm the original author of this content. You could use that to shape search results that include this content. Also, this service encourages authors to put even more content on the web. Your search engine would know where this content is before other spiders get to it.

Just a thought, 
Jim Schrempp