Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Controversy over search results: Google critics Microsoft

Favors Google in its search engine's own products? A Harvard researchers have found evidence it wants. Prompt him accusing the Internet giant bias - because the man has previously worked as a consultant for Microsoft. Not for the first time raises Benjamin Edelman allegations against Google. The researchers from the Harvard Business School had reported in early 2010 that the Google Toolbar pursued in Web browsers, even after you disable the browsing behavior of users on.


Now he has jointly investigated by Benjamin Lockwood, whether search engine providers prefer their own services such as Yahoo Mail or Google Maps for searches. This is actually the opinion of Edelman's case. With its already in August 2010 test conducted inquiries at the three big search companies Google and Yahoo tended to their own services in the hit list to heave up, writes Edelman.

Example "mail": After entering this search term supply Google and Yahoo respectively as first hit the link to their offer Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Bing refers firstly to mail. yahoo. com. Very similar to the situation when your search term "Maps" is. Again Yahoo and Google have their own map service each at number one in Google Maps Bing on the hit list followed leads from Yahoo Maps.

Virtual Earth does not manage the way in the top 3 Yahoo and Google would promote their own offers significantly more often than others, writes Harvard researchers. He accuses Google of deceiving the public. Google like to claim that his results were not tampered with, because they were based solely on algorithms.

The investigations have shown that there are distortions (bias). Google showed you do not even amused by Edelman's publication. Spokesman Adam Kovacevich told the "National Public Radio (NPR), researchers have long worked as a consultant for Microsoft, which indicates Edelman in his resume, too.

"It is therefore no surprise that he has developed a very unbalanced test that is his sponsor, but by falling in the Google." Google does not prefer his own services, said Kovacevich. "We conduct extensive testing to ensure that search results are sorted so that they provide users the most helpful answer." Edelman rejected the accusations back immediately.

Google wanted to distract attention with "personal attacks" by their own behavior, he told the BBC. This shows that Google could raise any arguments against his research. "To have done almost all my studies." The two Harvard researchers had more than 30 different searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing entered.

Including next to "Mail" and "Maps" and "video", "Spreadsheet", "browser" and "RSS readers" were. At first it was merely a suspicion that Google and Yahoo, the results in favor of their own brands distorted, the researchers write. So you've studied the whole, systematic and statistically analyzed.

Is among one of the researchers, how many times their own offers the number one search engine, finished in the top 3 or on the first page of results. The distortions were significantly: On the first page of results appeared 37 times at Yahoo's own links to offers on. For Bing, the researchers counted the other hand, 19 links to Yahoo services, Google only 15th Google has links on the first search page 32 plays for its own services, Yahoo and Bing get to 28 or 26 hits with Google reference.

The comparison shows clearly that Yahoo is pushing its own most popular. The distortion is in the position one way - that is top on the hit list of greatest. Click to listen Google, and Yahoo services with their own three times as likely to, as one would expect based on the results of other search engines.

The calculation of the search results from Google is playing the so-called Page Rank a central role. For each and every website that value between zero and ten is always calculated anew - a very complicated process with billions of unknowns. The more links point to a page, the higher your Page Rank.

Link is not the same link: If he comes from a highly ranked site, that site also inherits some of the rankings this page. The PageRank of a page is now only one of 200-300 factors which enter into the calculation of Google's results list. Added as the text content of the web page, HTML code staked keywords (tags), the page title and other criteria such as the date of last update.

The details of the Google hit list calculation is secret, have about what weight keywords in comparison to the page title. The analysis of hit lists, but allows to draw conclusions on how the hit lists come about. Just make this search engine optimizer. To avoid bias, the search algorithm is always slightly different - a constant cat and mouse game.

Therefore, hit lists can change from one day to another. Perhaps Google's own services including land solely in the results list at the top, because its developers have an information edge. For only the Google developers know all the details of the currently used search algorithm.
Posted by Manlio Gandolfi at 12:14 PM

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