[EAS]Search Biases

[pjk]

Subject:   Search Biases

(from NewsScan Daily, 2 July 2002)

FTC WARNS SEARCH ENGINE SITES TO IDENTIFY PAYING CUSTOMERS
The Federal Trade Commission is sending letters to various Web
search  engine operators (such as AltaVista, AOL Time Warner,
iWon.com, Looksmart,  Microsoft, Terra Lycos, and Direct Hit)
warning them to make it clear to  consumers when search results
yield sites that have paid for inclusion in  those results. Gary
Ruskin of Commercial Alert, an organization that had  complained to
the FTC about the practice, said: "We hope that when search  engines
disclose when ads are ads, then search engine users will flee those 
engines that have no editorial integrity." One corporate executive
who is  proud of his company's policies is AltaVista's Fred Bullock,
who says: "We  believe that the paid listings that we display on our
site are delineated  from our search results, and that the
disclosure is not misleading." (New  York Times 2 Jul 2002)
http://partners.nytimes.com/2002/07/02/technology/02SEAR.html

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One wonders, of course, when such commercial biases could start to
'infect' more academically oriented searching, given the growing
links between academic research and its commercialization, which
I've commented on before, e.g.
<http://jove.eng.yale.edu/pipermail/eas-info/2001/000322.html>.

   --PJK