Defining the Web: the politics of search engines
Introna, L.; Nissenbaum, H.
Computer
Volume 33, Issue 1, Jan 2000 Page(s):54 - 62
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/2.816269
Summary:Although the Web itself might truthfully claim a sovereign
disinterested and unbiased attitude toward the people who use it, the
authors claim that search engines, the tools that navigate the
astronomical number of pages (800 million and counting), favor popular,
wealthy, and powerful sites at the expense of others. Some researchers
have estimated that, taken individually, none of the Web search engines
studied indexes more than 16 percent of the total indexable Web.
Combined, the results from all search engines they studied covered only
about 42 percent of the Web. But what about those portions of the Web
that remain hidden from view? The article looks at how search engine
developers, designers, and producers grapple with the technical limits
that restrict what their engines can find. The authors also examine
influences that may determine systematic inclusion and exclusion of
certain sites, and the wide-ranging factors that dictate systematic
prominence for some sites while relegating others to systematic
invisibility
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