Greg,
> >> Search engine/indexing technology makes it easier to determine
> >> how often a particular character string occurs...
>
> > Who's working on the problem of monitoring how often a user
> > clicks a search-engine hit which is *not the one she wanted? A
> > remarkable aspect of all the testimony at WIPO hearings is that
> > *nobody could say how much business was actually being lost to
> > 'misleading' URLs -- even tho the question was repeatedly raised.
>
> I don't know, but like other things that have been described here, this
> is a difficult thing to ascertain. The concept "what someone wants"
> when they click on something is rather fuzzy (imho).
>
But but but! Youre all the time telling me that the consumer
determines the market! Surely in a medium where every act --
every click -- is recordable, the time-and-motion experts (or their
digital counterparts) could make a damn good guess whether one's
lingering on a URL before coming back for another indicates it was
relevant or not. I.e., in place of your chronic depression, isnt the
explanation that it would require a (packet sniffing?) search engine
site to *follow the user to see whether the delay is because s/he's
stopped there, or gone on to another link (or jumped ab novo to
another site) before coming back? And that that sort of tracing is
of course *unthinkable* -- at least as of 10 May 99?
kerry
