The authors are studying exclusions from search engine search results, and have found some 113 sites excluded, in whole or in part, from the French google.fr and German google.de compared with google.com. Learn more about the situation and context, test the exclusions for yourself, and submit further sites suspected to be excluded. Full article.
TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation
TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation – Part I and Part II. CircleID. (September – October 2002)
Replacement of Google with Alternative Search Systems in China: Documentation and Screen Shots with Jonathan Zittrain
The authors are studying Internet filtering in countries worldwide, and current investigations focus on restrictions on web access in China. Using a web-based system to test web filtering in China, the authors previously determined and confirmed that Google was inaccessible from at least one testing location in China; initially, in testing beginning August 29, a request for Google led to the error “host not found,” consistent with requests for other inaccessible or blocked sites. However, using related methods, the authors have now confirmed and documented reports that Chinese Internet access currently provides pages other than the ordinary Google home page in response to requests for google.com; such behavior is believed to have begun on September 8. The screen shots in this article document six instances of this replacement. Full article.
Real-Time Polling System
The Real-Time Polling System is allows students and other meeting participants to express comments immediately viewed by the instructor or, optionally, the entire class. In one application, the system might present a slider with extremes labeled “I am confused” and “I understand”; when sufficiently many students move their sliders sufficiently towards the “confused” end of the spectrum, the instructor might be automatically alerted to pause for review or questions from students. The system can also be configured with buttons, checkboxes, drop-down lists, and free-response text boxes, and it can perform crosstab analysis, automatically reporting results split according to relevant demographic or other characteristics. Results are ordinarily displayed on a projection screen at the front of the room and/or on administrative consoles. Textual responses are integrated with the Participant Response Display Mechanism.
Details in Berkman Center Meeting Tools.
iCravetv.biz and Entervision Retransmit CNN, Cartoon Network, PAX TV, California NBC Affiliate
I found that iCravetv.biz and Entervision retransmitted CNN, Cartoon Network, PAX TV, and a California NBC Affiliate — an urgent concern in light of contemporaneous disputes about video retransmission. Details and screenshots.
Survey of Domain Registration Services – Initial Results
Survey of Domain Registration Services. (August – November 2003)
Numerous competitive registrars offer diverse domain registration services to individuals, companies, and organizations. This site attempts to index and analyze their service offerings, facilitating analysis by other researchers and in preparation for additional analysis by the author.
Interested registrars have completed a survey of service offerings, and this page summarizes results. Surveys remain available for those additional registrars who care to submit information about their services.
Survey of Usage of the .US TLD
Survey of Usage of the .US TLD. (August – September 2002)
Recent policy changes allow registrations in .US with few restrictions. The author collects data about all known .US registrations, analyzing their registration patterns and usage. Certain registrants are found to register more than 2,000 domains each; these registrants may be gathering domains for commercial applications requiring many domains or for future sale, and large registrants (with ten or more .US domains) jointly hold a total of 46.4% of .US registrations to date. Non-Americans are found to register 7.0% of domains, and some of these registrations may violate .US registration restrictions that require nexus in the United States. The overwhelming majority of .US registrations as yet provide no original web content; working .US web sites are found to be clustered with certain registrars, while certain other registrars tend to register domains that offer no web content and domains offered for resale.
Registrations in Open ccTLDs
Registrations in Open ccTLDs. (June – July 2002)
The author analyzes domain registrations and usage in the “open ccTLDs” of .CC, .TV, and .WS in order to quantify the domains’ size, usage, and registration patterns. Analysis first reports the number of open ccTLD web pages indexed by Google, finding open ccTLDs to be less than one one-hundredth as large as .COM when measured in this way. The author next considers registration of commonly-used dictionary nouns; while many such domains have been registered in the tested ccTLDs, more than 80% lead only to placeholders or to no web content at all. Finally, the author investigates open ccTLD registrations that use the same second-level strings as the primary .COM domains of major corporations worldwide (including the Fortune 1000 and Forbes International 500). Again, many such domains have been registered, and more than two thirds of such registrations are by registrants other than the registrant of the corresponding .COM. The web content available on sampled domains provides evidence both of substantial defensive registrations and of substantial cybersquatting.
DNS as a Search Engine: A Quantitative Evaluation
DNS as a Search Engine: A Quantitative Evaluation. (June – July 2002)
In the course of the Internet’s growing popularity, many Internet users have come to use the domain name system (DNS) as a directory and search engine: When trying to reach the web site of a new or unknown company, users often request the web page at the address http://www.companyname.com, replacing “companyname” with a guess as to a site’s likely domain name. However, this DNS-based method is imperfect in that users may fail to correctly guess or remember a given company’s domain name, instead typically receiving errors or sites operated by other entities.
The research described in this article suggests that alternative search mechanisms, such as leading search engine Google, provide the content of interest with greater accuracy and reliability than does the DNS. This finding supports the claim offered by, among others, DNS software designer Paul Vixie, that DNS “is not a directory service and was never intended to be used as one.” This finding also quantifies Dan Gillmor‘s “Google effect” whereby Google replaces DNS as the preferred mechanism of locating content online.
Research further suggests that, while DNS offers what some might consider relatively high accuracy when conducting searches for top brands, companies, and organizations, DNS is substantially less accurate in searches for smaller brands, companies, and organizations.
Survey of Usage of the .BIZ TLD
Survey of Usage of the .BIZ TLD. (June 2002) With Jonathan Zittrain.
The authors examined a variety of data about registrations in .BIZ. Analysis suggests that at least 74% of currently registered .BIZ domains provide no web content or provide only error messages or placeholders. Using WHOIS data, we conclude that approximately 25% of .BIZ registrations are registered to the same organization that registered the corresponding .COM, and that such domains are about one-third less likely to provide substantive web content than domains registered by someone without a corresponding .COM registration. We document 4886 distinct .BIZ domains seemingly inconsistent with .BIZ registry anti-warehousing policies, suggesting that such policies are not being effectively enforced. Finally, we compare .BIZ registrar market shares with corresponding shares in .COM, .NET, and .ORG, and we summarize notable differences in registrar market share across TLDs.