i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

The article “Hard-Coding Bias in Google "Algorithmic" Search Results”, by Harvard professor Benjamin Edelmen, presents strong evidence that Google is intentionally manipulating search results despite promises to the contrary. Unlike Alejandro Diaz’s argument of algorithmic biases in “Through the Google Goggles: Sociopolitical Bias in Search Engine Design” (http://epl.scu.edu/~stsvalues/readings/Diaz_thesis_final.pdf), this article demonstrates deliberate placement of links to Google services at the top of search results. In some ways Edelman’s examples seem obvious, but his article still raises the question: are Google’s actions “wrong”? To help answer this question there are a few points to consider not presented in the article:

• Other search engines like Bing and Yahoo! also promote their services to the first search result. Observe the same searches as those in the article:
  Yahoo! search results for “the social network”
  
  
  Bing results for “the social network”
  
  
  Yahoo! search results for “acne”
  
  
  Bing search results for “acne”
  
  Although they’re not pictured, the searches that “trick” Google also trick Bing and Yahoo!.
• The services being promoted are not the same as typical search results. Besides looking visually different, ignoring the promoted service yields the same number of pages as Google’s standard search: 10. This is further evidence that this result is not treated the same as the algorithmic results. It also means web sites aren’t being bumped off the first page of results, they’re just moved further down the page.
• Most importantly, though, Edelmen’s examples are of search engines trying to be “smart” and predicting the user’s information need by displaying it above the results (thus saving time by preventing additional click(s) to other site(s)). For example, knowing movie showtimes and locations is often the end goal of searching a movie’s title. This is something search engines do to benefit users and keep them returning to their sites.

But even when considering these points, are Google’s (or any of the major search engine’s) actions “wrong”? In some ways, yes, since their services are given unfair prominence over the rest of the Web’s; however, it’s done to benefit users. Not all promoted services are owned by the search engine (see the “bos to sfo” example), which is evidence that search engines aren’t trying to unfairly promote their services but rather help their users.