Internet Business Blog

It’s hardly surprising that the average and not-so-average Internet user can find it difficult to place trust in a website they’re not familiar with. In today’s age of phishing, cross-site scripting and other forms of digital crime, it only takes a minute to log into a replica PayPal website to ‘confirm your security details’ only to hand over access to your hard-earned cash to some low-life scumbag.

Without the convenience of being escorted from website to website by a cyber chaperone, lone surfers are left to take their chances on unfamiliar ground. Surely, by now, some clever entity would have come up with something that can protect the hapless from the evils of the web or at least something that can whisper in their ear, “Pssst, this website is a bit dodgy” or “this website has been established for ages and lots of people think it’s great”.

Would it surprise you, if such a thing already existed and that it was being provided by Google? Narrow your field of vision to this blog for a minute and consider how Google has devised a system based upon peer review to help the you, the consumer, navigate the Internet minefield safely.

What’s so good about peer review and why is it trustworthy?

Some of the most trustworthy systems are those open to peer review. Many of the top encryption techniques are those able to withstand peer review i.e. you can examine the inner workings, but you’ll still not be able to break it. Linux is such a powerful operating system because its open source nature allows peer review.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why Google PageRank might make it as a good system for protection from harmful websites:

• Since Google PageRank is a measure of votes in the form of links, it provides an indication of how well liked a website is. People generally only link to websites they like as linking to ‘bad’ websites can reflect on them.
• Just as you would place greater value on the word of someone you trusted, votes (links) from already trusted websites, which have already been peer reviewed favourably, have a greater boosting effect on PageRank.
• PageRank is earned over time. Websites that are found to be untrustworthy aren’t usual around long enough to gain enough PageRank to sway your opinion.
• Google has lots of clever people working on protecting the integrity of PageRank.

At times, rightly or wrongly, I’ve used the little green bar as an indicator of how trustworthy a website is. Have you?

Technorati Tags: Google PageRank, Peer Review, Phishing, Internet safety