Editing Encyclopedia:Search engine test (section)

====General biases====
'''General (the Internet or people as a whole):'''
* ''Personal bias'' – Tendency to be more receptive to beliefs that one is familiar with, agrees with, or are common in one's daily culture, and to discount beliefs and views that contradict one's preferred views.
* ''Cultural and computer-usage bias'' – Biased towards information from Internet-using developed countries and affluent parts of society (internet access). Countries where computer use is not so common will often have lower rates of reference to equally notable material, which may therefore appear (mistakenly) non-notable.
* ''Undue weight'' – May disproportionally represent some matters, especially related to [[popular culture]] (some matters may be given far more space and others far less, than fairly represents their standing): ''popularity is not notability''.
* ''Sources not readily accessible'' – Some sources are accessible to all, but many are payment only, or not reported online. This may, for example, affect the search results you get for a historical topic that achieved its peak media prominence 50 or 100 years ago; valid sources may very well exist, but would be found on microfilms or subscription news archiving sites like [[ProQuest]] or [[Newspapers.com]] rather than in a general Google search.

'''General web search engines (Google, Bing web search etc.):'''
* ''Dark net'' – Search engines exclude a vast number of pages, and this may include systematic bias so that some matters are excluded disproportionately (for example, because they are commonly visible on sites that do not allow Google indexing, or the content for technical reasons cannot be indexed ([[Adobe Flash|Flash]]- or image-based websites etc.)
* ''Search engines as promotion tool'' – An [[Search engine optimization|industry exists]] seeking to influence site position, popularity, and ratings in such searches, or sell advertising space related to searches and search positions. Some subjects, such as [[pornographic actors]], are so dominated by these that searches cannot be reliably used to establish popularity.
* ''Review process'' varies; some sites accept any information, while others have some form of review or checking system in place.
* ''Self-mirroring'' – Sometimes other sites clone Wikipedia content, which is then passed around the Internet, and more pages built up based upon it (and often not cited), meaning that in reality the source of much of the search engine's findings are actually just copies of Wikipedia's own previous text, not genuine sources.
* ''Popular usage bias'' – Popular usage and [[urban legend]] is often reported over correctness
**Examples:
**#A search for the incorrect [[Charles Windsor]] gives 10 times more results than the correct [[Charles Mountbatten-Windsor]].
**#A search for the most common spelling of [[El Niño]] will often report it spelt "El Nino", without the [[diacritic]].
**#Urban legends are often reported widely, for example [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2005-43%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=%22uss++constitution%22+1779+%22set+sail+from+boston%22 hundreds of sites] report that the ''[[USS Constitution]]'' set sail in 1779, although the correct date is 1797.
* ''Popular views and perceptions'' are likely to be more reported. For example, there may be many references to [[acupuncture]] and confirming that people are often [[allergy|allergic]] to animal [[fur]], but it may only be with careful research that it is revealed there are medical peer-reviewed assessments of the former, and that people are usually not allergic to fur, but to the sticky skin and saliva particles ([[dander]]) {{em|within}} the fur.
* ''Language selection bias'' – For example, an Arabic speaker searching for information on [[homosexuality]] in Arabic will likely find pages which reflect a different bias than an English speaker searching in English on the same subject, since popular and media views and beliefs about homosexuality can differ widely between English-speaking countries (US, UK, Australia, etc.) that tend to include a higher proportion of homosexuality-accepting groups, and Arabic-speaking countries (Middle East) that tend to include a lower proportion.

'''Other:'''
* Note that other Google searches, particularly [http://books.google.com Google Book Search], have a different systemic bias from Google Web searches and give an interesting cross-check and a somewhat independent view.