Tapping Into the Brains of the Web

摘要

We know about the problems of finding information on the "invisible Web"― that portion of the Web that search engines cannot or will not spider. But there is a deeper, truly invisible Web of information that will forever exist beyond the scope of search engines― the knowledge residing in the brains of experts. The Web enabled us to identify those gurus, the people who have in-depth knowledge and who are thought-leaders and influencers, and email makes it easy to contact them. Unfortunately, gurus are bombarded with unsolicited email, not only with spam and viruses, but also with an astounding number of requests that go far beyond what is appropriate to ask. Search engine gurus regularly get requests like: "Can you please contact all the major search engines for me and explain to them that what I'm doing isn't spam?" To complicate things, sending email is so easy that people often send queries to experts with no real expectation of a response. As a result, these experts are deluged with what amounts to semi-spam, making it even more difficult to separate the real questions from the "Gee, I wonder if I can get an answer?" category.