steveb - 9:49 am on Mar 27, 2006 (gmt 0)

It's semantics to say hand sorting makes a directory. Where is that written in stone? How is that even logical? Directories list (normally alphabetically). That is what the word means. In fact, sorting is directly anti-directory-ish.

Search engines have always manually altered the results, most often by removing/banning sites. A search engine returns results for a query. How it does it is of no consequence to its mission. An engine is just a means of accomplishment. That is also what the word means.

Forget the grasping at semantics that aren't there, that's just a dead end. An engine that uses an algo to get a core of 1000 results, then hand removes blatant redirects is not any less of a search engine than one that doesn't, and will be a helluva lot better than the one that doesn't.

Whether the results blow so badly they have to hand sort is just a sign of how algos alone are going the way of the dodo. A search engine exists to provide practically useful results for users, not webmasters, not seos not search engineers, not linguists.

They can do it however they want, and hopefully will do whatever it takes to make the results better for users because that is the path that makes sense.