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Hard-Coded Bias In Google Search Results?
bonch writes "Technology consultant Benjamin Edelman has developed a methodology for determining the existence of a hard-coded bias in Google's search engine which places Google's services at the top of the results page. Searching for a stock ticker places Google Finance at the top along with a price chart, but adding a comma to the end of the query removes the Google link completely. Other variations, such as 'a sore throat' instead of 'sore throat,' removes Google Health from its top position. Queries in other categories provide links to not only Google services but also their preferred partners. Though Google claims it does not bias its results, Edelman cites a 2007 admission from Google's Marissa Mayers that they placed Google Finance at the top of the results page, calling it 'only fair' because they made the search engine. Edelman notes that Google cites its use of unbiased algorithms to dismiss antitrust scrutiny, and he recalls the DOJ's intervention in airlines providing favorable results for their own flights in customer reservation systems they owned."
But I believe it'd be better if their own services didn't display as a result and more as a "hey look your favorite search engine has something for that" kind of thing
Google's search engine thinks links to Google-related stuff is more relevant? HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?!!
Is this really that surprising? No. Is it fair? Maybe. Maybe not.
When I search goog, in google I get a link to google finance and then in the line right under it yahoo finance, MSN money, CNN money, Daily finance and Reuters. So what exactly is the problem? It seems like perhaps someones just nitpicking.
this had to happen sooner or later. And if we found out today, then it started happening at least two years ago.
If you don't like it...call a different lawnmower store!
"Edelman notes that Google cites its use of unbiased algorithms to dismiss antitrust scrutiny, and he recalls the DOJ's intervention in airlines providing favorable results for its own flights in customer reservation systems they owned."
Er, airlines sell tickets for profit. What exactly does Google make from you when you use their search engine?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Google "Finance" - Top result is *always* going to be a further Google Inc. website.
May not be what you wanted, however, if it aint top in Google, it don't exist on the interweb, right?
Isn't that kind of like getting mad at Sears for trying to sell you a Kenmore (their own brand) appliance before offering you an LG?
There's much more profit in pushing your own products.
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Did anyone read the article?
The search results for 'acne' vs 'acne,' were exactly the same. The difference was where the search started.
With the comma, the search results started immediately. Without the comma, the search results started after a 'Value-Added' section at the top of the page.
This doesn't show a problem with Google's search engine or algorithm, it shows that in addition to the search feature, Google also has a 'Decision Engine' (to steal a phrase)...or whatever that Wolfram Alpha crap said about itself.
This is exactly the same thing as the conversion/arithmetic functions that Google has. Is it Anti-trust for Google to automatically show you the "centimeters to inches" conversion instead of simply linking to another page that has a converter app?
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
When you search for a stock google shows you a graph and a list to several tickers.
> Google Finance Yahoo Finance MSN Money DailyFinance CNN Money Reuters
This is not about promoting googles products (it obviously lists competitors as well), it is about providing a more useful result
to the user.
The article is inaccurate. Google does not bias search results, the results which appear on top aren't regular search results, they are more like services.
If I search for "the social network" as the article provides as proof of bias, I am happy to see a service presenting me with additional info which is certainly NOT a search result, but rather dynamically generated content. No search result can provide that, only google can because after all its their site.
Besides, how awful would it be to have that special "generated" information not showing up first?? why would it be displayed in the 3rd, 4th, 6th position? It makes no sense! Because it ISN'T a web search result. It would also be an awful user experience.
If I wasn't new here I would ask: "Why is this even news in slashdot land?" :P
There's a difference between website search result and inline information from other google services.
The first search result for GOOG yahoo finance, but the first thing shown, before the search results, is google's finance data (as if you were searching via google finance).
"World map", "map of the usa", "shopping", no top places for google.
"6*9" gives "54", but no webpage results... OMG HAX
... is the bloody stupid "autocorrect" thing. You know, where you type in something that doesn't have a lot of hits, and it comes back with "Showing results for . Click for results for ". A good example is "mkiss" which is a networking utility - type that in and you get millions of results for "kiss" which is totally the wrong thing.
Google has become increasingly unusable. The stupid javascript preview thing is just about the last straw. I've since switched back to Altavista.
So the left hand is not talking to the right and vice-versa. This is nothing new for companies, and especially not for ones the size of Google. Is the preference towards self-promotion appropriate? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Given that most nearly any company you make a purchase from will suggest you try their own related products instead of their competitors it certainly isn't out the realm of consumer expectations.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
The things this moron is complaining about are not the "search results". Those are Google's helpful subject-based results. Like when I google "2+2", it helpfully returns 4. (OMG! Google is biased toward 4!) Whether adding helpful subject-based information that I didn't explicitly ask for is really helpful might be something to think about, but it has no bearing on any purported bias in the search results themselves.
On Google, Yahoo, Bing, and even WolframAlpha the "top link" for stock quotes is actually a widget that shows current stock info. Google's widget is the only one of the four that has links to all their competitors' finance sites.
The same is true of health searches, travel searches, you name it... Google's widgets give you choices, the rest shuffle you to their sponsored site.
Mod article troll.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
they only do this with search results that "break out" with more than the standard web snippet, as a user this means that you can usually type your query for any google service (a map location, etc.) into the regular google input rather than first navigating to the relevant subdomain. i find this very helpful if i am doing a series of things, such as looking up information about something local to me finding the website, then using that to pull up a map from google.
they are not messing with search results order, they are putting a breakout at the top of the results when your query hits potentially relevant results on one of their other functions.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
when i try added a coma or any other way to change the search i still got the same results. but then right below it is yahoo finance and tesco finance. I dont think there is anything biased here as google users are more likely to use other google services therfore pushing it to the top.
First result was MSN money.
Benjamin Edelman is a troll.
I call shenanigans. I'm quite sure it is algorithmic and properly parametrized.
Why is this presented as if it was a discovery of a secret nefarious plot? Google is very open with the fact that for certain search terms, they put a special result (often from another Google service) as the first result, before the normal web search results. (This is true of, aside from terms that are Google Health keywords and stock ticker symbols, anything that matches a pattern that is a valid Google Calculator calculation [e.g., "1 furlong/fortnight"]
Um, yes, the first results may come from OneBox, which is not from their "Algorithmic" search, but from a separate service that triggers on certain keywords, like "music", "movie"... and "csco". Adding commas just makes it not trigger the OneBox search. It used to be that the OneBox results are more visually different from the rest of the results, but the recent redesigns makes them very much alike.
OneBox is also used to implement features like "10 km in miles". See also http://searchengineland.com/meet-the-google-onebox-plus-box-direct-answers-the-10-pack-26706 I'm not use if they still use the word "OneBox" to describe this feature though, but it is still used in the Google Search Appliances.
Disclaimer. IANAGoogler, reposting this from my reddit reply.
so google is a nan?
Come on editors, if i wanted biased over hyped news I would turn on fox... I half expect the next Slashdot article to be about TSA offers groping me why forcing me to watch Google ads..
I am not sure what country you are in. I am in the US.
Gmail is the top result for me. Hotmail is placed 3rd following Yahoo mail.
At least someone realizes this is not part of Google search. I've seen this same article on 3 different sites (late on this one again Slashdot) and no one seems to get it. Maybe no one reads the articles anymore.
If Google thinks you are looking for a news, finance, books, images, shopping... related topic, it will put items in that category at the top. There are still 10 search results on the page not counting the special items. Bing does the same thing. The next level of search requires some categorization of results instead of a completely mixed set of data. Obviously Google will start their manual categorization in areas that have high CPC rates.
When Google finishes their travel site, expect to see a "special" section up top for airfares, hotels, car rental... and I'm sure competing companies will again complain. Here, Bing is ahead of Google. Search for airfare on Bing and you get text boxes for To, From, and Travel Dates. No one is complaining about this.
Why do you think they told you they were not? Who even asked?
There's a lot going on here.
First, the "comma" thing strongly affects Google Suggest, which drives Google Instant. It also affects Google Web Search, but not as strongly. Google Suggest, which comes up with those alternatives for Instant, isn't driven by Google PageRank; it's driven by Google Trends. Or rather, it used to be; it's not as strongly trend-driven as it was a few months ago. That's really a side issue.
Then there are the special-purpose subengines - stocks, health, celebrities, weather, sports, travel, etc. That was actually a Yahoo innovation. Yahoo introduced that in early 2008, with about fifty subengines, and for six months, their search was more on topic than Google's. Few noticed. (I found out about it at a talk by a Yahoo VP.) Then Google copied that idea, and now every major search engine has it. Some of the subengines won't fire with a trailing comma present. The subengines are what the article author is talking about as "hard-coded bias".
Subengines have been around since 2008. What's changing is that some of them now actually sell something. The "weather" and "stocks" subengines don't try to sell anything. The "travel" subengine is different. Try "flight from london to new york". Google has partners ready to sell you tickets. There's a "products" subengine. "dvd player" gets Google results for brands, stores, and types, directing you to Google partners. For neither travel nor products are these entries identified as advertisements.
This is where Google is pushing the line between search results and paid ads. This previously got them into trouble with the Federal Trade Commission back in 2002. Now it's more subtle, but it's back.
how dare they give me something for free and tell me to use more of their products.
Right, google is "Not a Number", googol is.
I love the google services that are provided at the top.
Calculator in particular.
Google has only claimed that they don't bias results of one third party in favor of another (provided no one is playing SEO games). They've never claimed to treat their own services impartially in their search results. They shouldn't be expected to.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Did a search on "search engine" (no quotes, just the words). The result had a bunch of competitors, no mention of a google site until the third page.
Check this out... I search for "bing", and what do I get? A big Google link to the left of the search box. It's even above the search results, in special colors and everything. Talk about biasing the results in favor of Google services! Even worse, the tile bar... TITLE BAR of the window says "Google Search", even though I searched for Bing! The nerve of these people. The DOJ should come down HARD on them for this clear monopoly abuse.
You run a seach and the first item that shows on the page is "not [a] search result"?
What the fuck is it, then? Some Google Jedi mind trick? "These are not 'results'"?!?!?
When I want Google Analytics, I type "analytics" into firefox's google box and click on the first box that pops up, knowing that it will take me to the right place. Same goes for maps, earth, code, and several other things. This is nothing new (and therefore not "news"), in fact, it's been this way as long as I can remember. Why are people even complaining about this?
Edelman cites a 2007 admission from Google's Marissa Mayers that they placed Google Finance at the top of the results page, calling it 'only fair' because they made the search engine
How is this any different than MSFT saying "We made IE as the default browser because we made the OS"?
nothing in life is free...
remove NOT from email.
The whole issue is not even a story.
1) User opens up browser, and types in query into the Google search box.
2) User sees tons of results and is overwhelmed by the number, chooses to filter out and only choose what is familiar.
3) User sees "Google" service, and selects that, because it seems to generally not be full of crap.
4) Over a long period of time, the popular results push down the less popular results, so users see Google things first.
5) Google stays at the top.
Now some idiot has declared that a new-but-still-similar query doesn't show the same results as the original query.
Why not? Because it's not the same query.
tl;dr: Fucking user error.
Perhaps it really shows how great google has been at acquiring businesses that are relevant in the Internet Age.
1. Don't be evil
2. Get filthy rich
Table-ized A.I.
It seems that most of the "bias" detected by this user can be explained by this: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-results.html
And it's been around since 2006.
I TRY to get Google finance when looking at how money exchange and stock. Google likes to point to Yahoo and others (which are all junk).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The finance tickers and other things like weather in Google are called "One Boxes," which are ways to trigger off custom results based on regular expressions. We use them in my work as Google Search Appliance customers, and they work in very much the same way on a search appliance. If someone puts in a ticker with a comma, for example, it might make the One Box disappear because the rules governing it don't allow for that. I don't think that should be considered a bias in the case of specific queries which can be construed as possibly being served more effectively with a ticker interface or something else that can provide results without having to click a link.
Another reason One Boxes are more effective for things like stock tickers is that this is temporal data, which might not well be served by results which are biased by other methods (like post date, number of links to the page, and so on.)
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" - Emma Goldman
And the evidence shows that they are. However, for some searches, they show an informative entry at the top, which includes information, like stock quotes, and links to various sources of more info. The only 'issue' is that their services are more prominent than other's services in that informative entry.
After that are the unbiased search results.
Personally, I'd like them to add a little bias to the searches. I'd like to spend less time staring at yet another experts-exchange page, and have anyone caught spamming forums to be struck from Google entirely.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Slashdot is totally biased!
They have their name in huge print at the top of the page, and all the links go to various pages on their domain! Clearly they're biased toward themselves!
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Searching for switch on Cisco's web site only returns results that have to do with Cisco equipment news at 11. Duh, Google is going to cross promote.
This is silly, if I type acne vs acne, i get the same exact results list. There are no google-biased links at the top. But there are almost 1 million more hits for acne then when Edelman created the posted screen captures...that's telling.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Why is this a story? It's documented feature, the Google Onebox. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-results.html
And the evidence shows that they are. However, for some searches, they show an informative entry at the top, which includes information, like stock quotes, and links to various sources of more info. The only 'issue' is that their services are more prominent than other's services in that informative entry.
It seems they are really just offering you a quick way to perform other related searches using Google based on the syntax of the search you entered.
The question should then be... when you go to Google finance or Google Health.... are the results you see on those services [results about the actual subject matter] unbiased?
I saw this article earlier in the week and decided not to submit it to /. because it said the following:
I tried this. Without the comma, Yahoo Finance came up as the first result. With the comma, Yahoo Finance came up as the first result. If I can't reproduce your experiment's results, then I view your whole hypothesis with skepticism.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
But I believe it'd be better if their own services didn't display as a result and more as a "hey look your favorite search engine has something for that" kind of thing
I think that Google should use the same algorithm no matter what the term is searched.
However, Google services could be shown in the user's search as an advertisement, the same method that every company uses to promote their products / services in Google.
This can't be true. I googled it and nothing showed up that gave me the impression that google was doing anything wrong!
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
They must feel pretty ripped off. It failed to prove anything.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
I mean, I hate to say it, but searching for something sepecific, like the result to a math problem or a certain physical constant, or where a companies stock is at used to be a pain in the ass. First you have to search for it, then click a few links and search it again before you got a result.
Call me evil or some other bullshit, but I enjoy the ease of typing in what I need and getting the result without playing follow the links.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Perturb good search strings with noise and sites made to communicate clearly and be reasonably searchable will fall victim to that noise and fall off of the rankings.
In todays news a man discovered that a lack of noise on google run and google coached pages will cause things like turning "sore throat" (a _general_ topic) into "a sore throat" (a specific event descriptive) or adding unnecessary punctuation to a valid search term may lead to less stable results.
Insiders claim that this is a failure of the search engine to properly spam itself and that the lack of self spam is evidence that spammed pages are clearly finding themselves separately categorized from concise sites.
In other news, language based filters filter different language based constructs differently... On expert was quoted as saying "no duh..."
For the Sarcasm Impaired: If the fix were in, then the addition of "a" to "sore throat" would _never_ drop the site from the ranking because the hacked unconditional keyword match for "sore" and "throat" would never be confused by "a". Such hacked algorithms would be noise tolerant not noise susceptible. Researcher has thus proved the _absence_ of wired-up responses.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
it was also a joke in that if x is a nan then
x!=x will be true.
(Example implementation abstracted from game theory) The way one would create search magnets in the keyword result set would be to take individual keywords, such as "sore" and "throat" and "natural" and "remedy" (for this example of a site that was paying up for, in this case "natural remedies for sore throats") and put magnet ranking on those words. (Or one could also "demagnetize" other sites.)
In each case each magnetized word would be assigned a factor slightly greater than one (e.g. 1.0005). All non-magnetic words at all sites would have an identity value of 1.0.
When composing the indexes the total magnetic factor of each keyword would be calculated by simple multiplication. This would set cause all the known words to have their own "domain strength". A word that was very bought up would have a very high domain strength. Think words like "natural" that everybody wants, and that some would buy. (And think negative words like "goatse" which the system would want to have very weak domains just in principle; or "Toyota" which Ford and Mitsubishi might each want to bury. Not to mention A, AN and THE which are noise words in English.)
Now the search term comes in. All the words are separated and the words with the strongest domain are made most dominant in the query. Then you do rank and weight calculations and filter this preferred list. Because of the magnets the bought sites bubble up to the front.
In such a magnitized system adding noise words and punctuation would have no noticable effect.
BUT this is not what was observed... Instead...
In a fair language analysis the words are considered as phrasings. A phrase like "natural remedy for a sore throat" would ideally be represented as a conceptual atom. (In practical terms most google users have not spent significant amounts of time in various keyword boolean search contexts, so they don't get that this is a good "atom" so) the system will look for word pairs and triplets "sore throat" "natural remedy" and because that would lead to a cartesian product of equal indexes, such a filter would rank the words by their original position such that "natural remedy sore throat" would favor natural remedies while "sore throat natural remedy" would be more focused on the sore throat that the naturalness of the remedy. This makes "sore throat remedy" a super set of "sore throat natural remedy" but would make "natural remedy sore throat" tend to select against the matches for "sore throat" alone.
Now the various weighted phrases and lexemes get dispatched in parallel to sub-engines that go fishing through the indexes by word and by phrase. (We know this because really cruddy random phrases will return results such that a search for "cat elephant guitar fountain" will return stable results as surely as "natural sore throat remedy".
When the sub-searches find "enough results" the combiner filters them into a stable list by score strenght and that's what you get.
And that is what we see.
For instance, you type "sore throat" and your first listing is a definition (from google.com/health), and then there are a bunch of remedy sites. You make it "a sore throat" and the medical definition disappears but the rest of the rankings stay the same.
Now if google were to _stupidly_ make "sore throat" return every definition for sore throat on the web before it got to any of the remedies, well, we wouldn't use google. So it makes sense that the very first "definition of" result would stop the "Definition of" search, but that singe result would be at the top because the two words "sore throat" may well represent a need for a definition on the part of the querier. But query "what is a sore throat" and you get something from princton.edu at the moment; but again just one "definition of" result from that query engine.
Still on, you put "a sore throat" and the likely hood of needing a definition of the thing you know is already singular and the "definition of" result just disappears.
These things continue on with "treatm
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
All major search engines do this. They flag certain key words/phrases for special display of their own services. The fine line is that they do not consider those "additions" to be part of the formal search results which are generally algorithmically generated.
I don't get what adding a comma is supposed to prove? You can type any search term adding a comma and the results will be different especially prefing sites actually having a comma in the same place.
So I searched for "stock ticker", the first result is google but it is a paid ad result .. The first actual hit is a link to news.moneycentral.msn.com
The google health links are an internal database like the google calculator and other convienece responses from the search engine. I agree somewhat that google health and all non search index results can and should be made clearer but at the same time it is not proof of a preferncing conspiracy.
I suspect online health reference sites not included in the results will not appreciate their scheme one bit but most of the good reference sites are already linked.
I frequently forget the correct url to google language tools.
Every time I type in "spanish to english" or something like that, it always seems to recommend the competition first, if anything I wish theirs would be the top result.
Also, on the slim chance that someone from google is reading, for the love of jebus, can you let googlers with an account setup a domain filter on their search results? PLEASE? So sick of experts-exchange and other crappy sites.
You cannot abuse a dominant market position in one area to dominate another area. Manipulating their search results to put competitors at a disadvantage in areas other than search is something that companies can't compete with.
I know that I can request cinema times or stock tickers or formula conversions and Google will do that for me. It's pretty cool that it gives health information as well.
I never assumed this was a search. Just Google deciding it was an information provider where search is one of the processes it uses.
They're also providing your with an excellent free service. It's not that much of a hassle if they promote their goods in the process. Secondly if Google's products come up at the top of the results for Bing when searching for maps or documents then why shouldn't they on Google?
I don't think it's a hard coded bias either. Google finance does not come up at all when searching for 'stocks' but Yahoo finance does. Why would Google miss out on something so obvious where as Yahoo must do something to get into those results.
Why is this surprising? Any search engine does the same.
was convincing the world Google isn't evil.
their links work, I honestly don't care. Regardless, it's not like there's 500000000 Google links that take up pages and pages of results. It's only one or two links. Oh boohoo, Google is evil! The world is going to end oh no.
It's at the top of the article (so the Author isn't trying to hide it thankfully).
I don't see the issue that the author is trying to point out... to me the search terms are different, so I would expect different results... further, the issue of Google's offered service being listed first; umm, well, the called out results aren't "normal" search results... you can see in the screen scrapes in the article that "competitor" links show up in the very same "result block"... gee, that's odd... oh, wait... my search term happened to be an EXACT match for a medical/health issue, a stock ticker symbol, a city, etc. (well, the author could have gone for conspiracy on the the city one, there weren't any competing services like mapquest listed)
It seems far more likely that Google is trying to make it easier for people using search to find useful results... If I'm searching for "acne" then I'd probably find some value in some health advice (again, notice that Google has listed competitor links as well in the same result block). If I've searched for a term that ends with a comma then I've either started the search before typing it all out or perhaps I'm looking for a sentence fragment that I saw in an earlier search and I happen to remember there was a comma right after the word I've searched for (I don't suppose many folks do that, but I have plenty).