Measuring search engine bias

This paper examines a real-time measure of bias in Web search engines. The measure captures the degree to which the distribution of URLs, retrieved in response to a query, deviates from an ideal or fair distribution for that query. This ideal is approximated by the distribution produced by a collection of search engines. Differences between bias and classical retrieval measures are highlighted by examining the possibilities for bias in four extreme cases of recall and precision. The results of experiments examining the influence on bias measurement of subject domains, search engines, and search terms are presented. Three general conclusions are drawn: (1) the performance of search engines can be distinguished with the aid of the bias measure; (2) bias values depend on the subject matter under consideration; (3) choice of search terms does not account for much of the variance in bias values. These conclusions underscore the need to develop “bias profiles” for search engines.