Search neutrality

Background and Definition of Search Neutrality
– Search neutrality was mentioned in an academic paper by Andrew Odlyzko in March 2009.
– The term gained public attention after an opinion letter by Adam Raff in December 2009.
– Adam and Shivaun Raff launched SearchNeutrality.org to promote investigations against Google.
– The concept of search neutrality lacks consensus compared to net neutrality.
– Search engines are designed to collect, filter, and rank results based on relevance, making neutrality difficult to define and implement.

Vertical Search Spam Penalties
– Users rely on search engines to access information on the web.
– Foundem, a vertical search service, experienced a significant drop in traffic and business.
– Foundem claimed that Google deliberately applied penalties to vertical search engines as competition.
– The use of iframe HTML tags and javascript loading were cited as potential reasons for the penalties.
– Foundem is supported by the Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplace, a Microsoft proxy group.

Other Cases and Investigations
– Google’s dominant market share has made it a target for search neutrality litigation.
– Other companies, such as eJustice.fr and Microsoft’s Ciao!, joined Foundem in claiming unfair penalties by Google.
– Google expressed concern for fair competition in a blog article in February 2010.
– Antitrust laws have been used to investigate search neutrality allegations against Google.
– The FTC ended its antitrust investigation into Google without filing a formal complaint.

Arguments for and against Search Neutrality
Arguments for Search Neutrality:
– Results would not be biased towards sites with more advertising, but towards sites most relevant to the user.
– Encourages sites to have more quality content rather than pay to rank higher on organic results.
– Restrains search engines from only supporting their best advertisers.
– Allows for organized, logical manipulation of search results by an objective, automatic algorithm.
– Personalized search results might suppress information that disagrees with users’ worldviews, isolating them in their own cultural or ideological filter bubbles.

Arguments against Search Neutrality:
– Forcing search engines to treat all websites equally would remove the biased view of the Internet that search users are seeking.
– Search neutrality could cause search engines to become stagnant and limit their ability to adjust rankings based on popularity, relevance, or quality content.
– Requiring transparent algorithms could expose search engines’ private intellectual property and allow spammers to exploit and target the algorithm.
– Removing a search engine’s ability to directly manipulate rankings limits their ability to penalize dishonest websites that use black hat techniques.
– Search engines like Google and Bing have different levels of bias, with Google being less biased than its principal competitor.

Impact of Search Neutrality on Websites
– Google’s Universal Search system has been criticized for using the least neutral search engine practices, leading to a decline in web traffic for external websites.
– Search neutrality could potentially affect the ranking of websites and their visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
– The case against Google brought by the owners of Foundem highlights the impact of search neutrality on website rankings.
– Search engines’ ability to directly manipulate rankings can influence the success or failure of websites.
– Search neutrality could limit search engines’ ability to link to their own services, potentially affecting web traffic for external websites.