4HourSearch & Me

Nowadays, SERP's should be taken with a grain of salt.

I came across the new search engine 4HourSearch, which mocks the recently released "Cuil" site. Sam Pullara, the developer of 4HourSearch makes available the source code to his own demonstration of Yahoo's BOSS and YUI tools, so I took a quick peek at his demo.

I did a basic search for my own name and the results were a bit scary for me. My blog (this one) was linked to an Orlando (FL) armed robber's mugshot as you see below:

My blog description but the mugshot is not me.

Now, I'm not blaming the developer of 4HourSearch nor Yahoo. But imagine some authority figure was to use Yahoo's search results only to find my personal or related details and came to a conclusion that I have committed a crime based on the example SERP pictured above! It's disturbing and unacceptable; a "false accusation" in same cases.

Before any SERP's can be considered plausible, one must understand how vital information is used, linked and sometimes doubtful when doing research or just plainly looking for information on someone.

By the way, I think Sam Pullara's demo is a great example of new creative search engines on the rise.