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."

Comments

Yawn.

[pushing-robot]

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.

Re:weird

[DragonWriter]

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.

Someone seems to think they've "discovered" Google secretly "manipulating" search results when all they've done is "discover" a feature that Google is quite open about that certain search results get a special result which is not a product of the normal web-search put at the top.

Google has for quite some time been building in features that attempt to recognize the special meaning of search terms, and will respond to searches that match one of the mechanisms they have for potential meaning with a special result.

This is just as algorithmic as regular web search, but is a result of a term triggering a special algorithm (either a stock ticker symbol, which gives a special result that presents Google Finance info with links to other financial information sources, a formula that can be processed by Google Calculator in which case the calculator result appears before the normal web search results, etc.)

Re:I just searched for a stock ticker

[whoever57]

Benjamin Edelman is a troll.

More importantly he is a paid consultant for Microsoft.

Re:weird

[DragonWriter]

Mod parent "woosh" for completely missing the point of the article (which he probably didn't read).

Read the article. Its stupid. Seriously.

The point is that Google has said many times that it should be immune to anti-trust scrutiny because its search results are unbiased, among other reasons.

Sure, and if you want to make an argument that their actively promoted, publicly announced, documented Universal Search feature is inconsistent with those statements, there may be a legitimate argument to be made about that.

OTOH, most of TFA was an attempt to "prove" that Google was doing something secret and underhanded by pretending that Universal Search wasn't a publicly disclosed, widely promoted, well-documented feature and pretending to "discover" the feature.

It's completely intellectually dishonest.