Study Suggests That Google Has Its Thumb on Scale in Search

Google entices people to search by promising links to the best that the web has to offer. But research released Monday, led by top academics but paid for by one of Google’s rivals, suggests that Google sometimes alters results to play up its own content despite people’s preferences.In the study, researchers from Harvard and Columbia presented 2,690 web users with two versions of Google. One version showed search results for local businesses as users usually see them, with links to the businesses along with ratings as posted to a Google site. The other version showed links to businesses along with ratings from rival sites like Yelp, the online review website, which paid for the study.
www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/business/study-suggests-that-google-has-its-thumb-on-scale-in-search.htmlAlso see:Always click the first Google result? You might want to stop doing that.
When you go to Google for anything, be it a weather report or a phone number or an explanation of string theory, you assume that the top results will always be the very best. Those are, at least, the only ones you click: Studies suggest it’s a rare, rare Googler who bothers scrolling past search result number five.But according to a highly critical new paper out from legal scholar Tim Wu, Harvard Business School professor Michael Luca and data scientists at Yelp, many of us are totally missing out on the information that’s most relevant, and critical, to our lives.
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/06/30/always-click-the-first-google-result-you-might-want-to-stop-doing-that/Google harms consumers by favoring its own services, study finds [IDG]
Google’s favoring of its own services in search results doesn’t just harm competitors, it also harms consumers, according to research sponsored by a complainant in the EU antitrust trial against the company.The study found that users are 45 percent more likely to click on search results organically generated by Google’s own search engine than on results in which Google favors its own services, as it does now.
www.computerworld.co.nz/article/578545/google-harms-consumers-by-favoring-its-own-services-study-finds/

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