I'd mentioned Leo Gomes's experience here. Gomes explains what sort of links were cluttering his web-search results:

new and improved spam: pseudo-useful pages that are usually just shells for ads. A page might at first glance seem like a guide to your topic. But after a minute or two, it becomes evident that the information is virtually useless but is surrounded by an ocean of ads.

According to Gomes's expert, "there's no specific word" for these well-known nuisances. (Gomes suggests "Potemkin Web sites because they are all facades".)

Can we come up with an apt name?

I propose wikipollution. When I look up factual information now I need to try and work out what to specify to exlude the crap wiki-clones: -GNU is a start.

I mentioned in the other thread that the word commonly used is spamdexing.

Web sites set up like this are used in an attempt to fool Google into thinking that a site is more important than it is because a number of sites link to it.

Why two threads on virtually the same subject, shu? carrying out some spamdexing of your own?

I wondered myself, arnie.

When I look up factual information now I need to try and work out what to specify to exlude the crap wiki-clones: -GNU is a start.

Can you explain about the crap wiki-clones and the -GNUs? I don't know what that means.

I don't always have a lot of faith in Wikipedia because it can be change ad lib. I often question its accuracy, as Hic does in this post. Am I being too anal?

quote:

Can you explain about the crap wiki-clones and the -GNUs? I don't know what that means.

The crap Wiki-clones are basically websites that are run by webmasters who are too lazy to write their own content and just lift it bodily (and often inaccurately) from sites like Wikipedia and don't bother monitoring any changes to it, so it gets distorted quite quickly. A Wiki is an online article that can be edited by anyone else with clearance to do so.

GNUs are similar to Wikipedia in that they're open-source and can therefore be changed by anyone, but they run mainly on Unix and Linux (different operating systems).

quote:

I don't always have a lot of faith in Wikipedia because it can be change ad lib. I often question its accuracy, as Hic does in this post. Am I being too anal?

The ability to change is both a strength and a weakness of Wikipedia. As you say, any article can be changed by anyone, but they keep backups so if anyone goes too far there is always the facility to revert to an earlier version. The main strength of Wikipedia is that any inaccuracies and mistakes can be rectified when found and that makes information MORE likely to be accurate (but always cross-check with other sites just in case).

All of the clones should have some kind of identifying small print like "ripped off Wikipedia under the terms of the GNU, ha ha, the fools", therefore searching with minus signs in front of key terms like GNU and Wikipedia should work to filter them all out; but often doesn't.