Search is Stacked in Google's Favor

Andrew Keen of TechCrunch  posted this today about Google.  Here’s the salient point:

Google’s bias isn’t just limited to finance and health. In a January 2011 paper, “Measuring Bias in Organic Web Search,” written with Harvard Business School doctoral candidate Benjamin Lockwood, Edelman found that Google listed its own map service as the first result when a user queries “maps.” It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that Edelman and Lockwood discovered that 86% of map searches conducted on Google end up with the user clicking on Google Maps.

Here’s the original paper. http://www.benedelman.org/searchbias/

The best results can be the ones people share with you. But if you don’t know someone, how can you get content from them?

I’m working on these problems, and creating some interesting opportunities. More to come this week.