Naver to Scrap Real-Time Search Rankings

Korea's top Net portal Naver has decided to scrap real-time search rankings which have encouraged manipulations by online political activists.

Naver said Thursday that it will give up showing real-time search rankings on its key portal web page from Feb. 25. "We will discontinue the services to meet up changing consumer preferences for deciding on contents that appeal with their own taste instead of staying spoonfed by others."

Naver started the real-time ranking service in May 2005 predicated on most-searched words. But both political activists and businesses possess manipulated the rankings by mobilizing click farms to advertise themselves.

Naver have been reluctant to turn off the rankings despite the fact that rival Kakao shut them straight down in February this past year prior to the general election. Rather, Naver displayed them in a significantly less conspicuous portion of its mobile web-site but omitted them only for the weeks before the general election.

Your choice to scrap them completely comes before by-elections in April and suggests Naver is cautious with being implicated in another scandal relating to the hotly contested battle.

"It probably was hard for Naver to discontinue its real-time search engine rankings, which play a good decisive role found in jacking up visitor traffic," a business insider said. "But concurrently Korea's leading search on the internet portal with annual product sales of W6 trillion can't afford to locate itself at the center of an opinion-rigging scandal" (US$1=W1,118).