Discovering Why Public Information Search Exploits the Dark Web
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
Personal and professional information needs increases rapidly as more personal information is published. It is mind-boggling to consider how much Web content we have made available exists archived in way too many places to peruse. Many news articles report that the Internet contains around 1,000,000,000,000 Web pages and that this Web mass increases at a rate of a thousand million URLs per diem. Yet though online content goes away after large archives close (as when blogging services like Vox close), online information storage continues to increase methodically.
We will never be able to visit all those pages. Yet what seems most staggering is that these figures document no more than those sites that are part of the discovered Web. Researchers say there may be trillions more archives buried in uncrawlable indexes and databases dubbed the Deep Web, the Unindexable Web, or the Unsearchable Web. Such unreachable archives rely upon custom search indexes and may only hide behind restricted memberships, or they may be encapsulated in obscure structures. There are tens of thousands of custom search interfaces that let you search the hard-to-reach content across the closed Web.
Spanning the gulf between the two Webs, existing side-by-side with each other, is the crossroads of public data resources. Most often known as public records, the public information archives offer simple to complex search capability although they may be repackaged through fee-based background records search programs. Based on reports at the Background Records blog by RecordsBackground.com, there is a plethora of Internet archives of public records.
These people records most often come from federal or state archives or one may find them in private collections, for example telephone and business directories, class or school reunion sites, etc. In the same way a job site practices a form of public records publication. Still, a majorty of people correlate ‘public records’ with government data.
In order to scour public records to find out about a job applicant, if only to do a thorough background review, you won’t have the time or maybe you don’t have the skill to search all those databases. For this reason the public records search industry has become a big business. A few observers report people search revenues in billions of USD. Reviewing untold volumes of background records available just for US citizens alone extends quite beyond the abilities of most of us. Every major search engine barely scratches the mass of the mountains of data. Quite a few educational Websites discuss the demand for and condition of public records search.
Useful resources such as RecordsBackground.com help us see the state of public records search and understand it better.
The public’s information craving increaes geometrically over time thanks to the power of the Web. Due to the Big Bang of Electronic Publishing, Web content we have made available exists across a array of platforms too vast to peruse. Highly speculative estimates say that the World Wide Web comprises approximately 1 trillion Web pages and that this Web mass expands with up to a thousand million documents each day. While a vast amount of Web pages is destroyed if big services fail (two examples include GeoCities and Vox), Internet-based data publication continues to increase methodically.