9/11 Review's Mirrors

One of the ways 9/11 Review appears to support the community of researchers is by mirroring sites. As of January, 2004, 9/11 Review had mirrors of five sites:

• thewebfairy.com
• nerdcities.com/guardian
• serendipity.li
• geocities.com/killtown
• elitewatch.netfirms.com

Although it is easy to assume that mirrors can only be beneficial for the dissemination of the information in these sites, this is not necessarily the case. Consider the following.

• The site copies on 9/11 Review are not actively updated mirrors, but are snapshots of the sites, and are all several months out of date. The term mirror is misleading because it implies an up-to-date copy.
• The mirrors on 9/11 Review have a fairly high Google PageRank, and in many cases appear before the original pages in search results. Many people will bookmark pages in 9/11 Review's mirrors instead of on the original sites. If 9/11 Review's mirrors disappear, those bookmarks will become obsolete.
• 9/11 Review, a high-ranking site with lots of relevant words and phrases, intercepts some of the traffic that would otherwise go to the original sites, and directs some of it back to those sites through its abundant links. When 9/11 Review references pages in a mirrored site it usually provides links to the page both in the original site and in the local mirror. Many readers will select the Local Copy link, and subsequently bookmark pages in 9/11 Review's mirrors rather than in the original sites.
• Since guardian, serendipity, and killtown all have a number of other mirrors, the value of 9/11 Review's mirrors as backup against loss of the original sites is questionable. 9/11 Review's mirrors may even discourage the creation of additional mirrors by others. Of course we have no way of knowing that 9/11 Review will maintain its mirrors in the event of the disappearance of the original sites and other mirrors.

A further point to note about the mirrors is that webfairy leads the list, thus subtly discrediting the sites below it.

In addition to intercepting traffic that would otherwise reach the original sites, 9/11 Review's mirrors serve another important function. One of the site's goals is to make the reader think that its Canadian academics ... working with you to publish results ... to the highest level of academic excellence (see About) are responsible for work actually done by others who are not part of 9/11 Review. Using the mirror, it can point to a copy of Guardian's analysis of FEMA's World Trade Center report with a 911review.org URL to fool the reader into thinking that 9/11 Review analyzes official reports, when in fact it does not.