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Search Engine Wars: Fighting Dirty Tricks

A $1 billion-a-year industry has sprung up offering advertisers and other businesses advice on how to get the most consumer traffic out of their Web pages. Most are ethical, but some specialize in building pages that trick search engines into thinking they're more important than they are. In response, engines continually tweak programs to prevent misleading returns. NPR's Rick Karr reports.

Copyright 2004 NPR

Rick Karr contributes reports on the arts to NPR News. He is a correspondent for the weekly PBS public affairs show Bill Moyers Journal and teaches radio journalism at Columbia University.