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Search Engine Results Relatively Fair
perkr writes "The Economist and PhysicsWeb report on a study from Indiana
University claiming that search engines have an egalitarian effect
that gives new pages a greater chance to be discovered, compared to
what would be the case in the absence of search engines. Based on an
analysis of Web traffic and topology, this result contradicts the
widely held 'Googlearchy' hypothesis according to which search engines
amplify the rich-get-richer dynamics of the Web."
First of all any time you want to analyze Google, you have to realize that they've had ten PhDs crunching the problem already for years. Google is designed to give the best results for whatever its users are searching, thus any apparent bent towards egalitarianism, monopolism, antidisestablishmentarianism, or what-have-you, is purely incidental.
If you're searching for something obscure, Google will instantly tell you the one startup company building it. On the other hand, if you want something mainstream, they'll give you a prioritized list of the best sources. There's no alterior motive it seems - they just give you what you searched for... imagine that! I've seen a business through from obscure geek hack to the mainstream consumer, and Google has been there at every step of the way, working exactly as users expect. To accuse them of favoring any particular stratum of that chain is awfully unfouned IMHO unless there are some specific examples. Indeed, answering users' needs instead of pandering to the status quo seems to be he most valuable bit of what google does.
I've made sites with fairly mainstream content before, which were totally ignored by Google
That is precisely what the "rich get richer" effect is about. This study seems to be measuring the wrong thing. Of course your mainstream site is going to get a few hits from Google because your site mentions something in some quirky way that other sites don't. However, because there are already 10,000 sites about what you have written, you will never get into the top ten search results. Google puts sites near the front of the SERPs because they have lots of incoming links. Sites that are in the top will get a lot more traffic and some percent of that traffic links to them. Sites at the bottom, get few new incoming links.
Yes those few visitors that you are getting from Google are more visitors than you would get if Google did not exists, but that says nothing about the relative number of visitors that your competitors are getting.