After noticing David Watanabe's excellent safari search plugin acting oddly I posted the below comment on his blog:
Ive noticed that while all affiliate links are tagged there seems to be another less widespread but potentially more serious problem with Inquisitor search. As far as I can tell affiliate links are all activated by typing a specific product name (i.e. Macbook). These links all point users to places where they will end up with identical products. If you search for iPod people who have the affiliate links turned on will end up with the same item that those with affiliate links turned off will. Now if you go to Inquisitor and search any word with the term torrent added to it the top result is the XTorrent website. If you hit enter to go to Google search however that is not the first result. This is much worse than hidden affiliate links in that new/inexperienced torrent users that may not be aware of other options are all being pointed to one program that may or may not suit their needs. While before a search for Macbook will lead you to a Macbook, a search for torrent will lead you to Xtorrent, not one of the many great alternatives such as Transmission or Azereus). I feel that this is a much more serious breach and should be amended in a similar fashion to the affiliate links.
Shortly after I received a rather terse email telling me to stop using Inquisitor if I felt this way. I love Inquisitor and will continue using it. I only think that this fact should be known by users of the software.
What does everyone think?
Ive noticed that while all affiliate links are tagged there seems to be another less widespread but potentially more serious problem with Inquisitor search. As far as I can tell affiliate links are all activated by typing a specific product name (i.e. Macbook). These links all point users to places where they will end up with identical products. If you search for iPod people who have the affiliate links turned on will end up with the same item that those with affiliate links turned off will. Now if you go to Inquisitor and search any word with the term torrent added to it the top result is the XTorrent website. If you hit enter to go to Google search however that is not the first result. This is much worse than hidden affiliate links in that new/inexperienced torrent users that may not be aware of other options are all being pointed to one program that may or may not suit their needs. While before a search for Macbook will lead you to a Macbook, a search for torrent will lead you to Xtorrent, not one of the many great alternatives such as Transmission or Azereus). I feel that this is a much more serious breach and should be amended in a similar fashion to the affiliate links.
Shortly after I received a rather terse email telling me to stop using Inquisitor if I felt this way. I love Inquisitor and will continue using it. I only think that this fact should be known by users of the software.
What does everyone think?
