On the trustworthiness and transparency of a web search site examined using "gender-equal" as a search keyword

Abstract

It has been believed that Web search sites are organic, i.e., algorithmic, fair, and unbiased. However, in recent years, many people are of the opinion that there might be a problem with the trustworthiness of the search site Google; but, no studies to date have provided any evidence on this issue. This paper investigates the trustworthiness of the SERP (search engine result page) of Google in response to a search keyword "gender-equal" in Japanese. Although there were Web pages on Google's SERP in response to this search keyword, it was difficult to explain why the web pages pertaining to the gender-bashing sects were ranked consistently higher than those pertaining to the gender advocates. This observation was made when a SERP of Google was compared with the SERPs returned by its six partner search sites such as Nifty, Livedoor, Excite, Biglobe, Infoseek, and goo as well as Yahoo!Japan. Further, it was also revealed that explaining the ranks of such Web pages in terms of both PageRankTM and the number of backlinks was difficult. In order to restore the trustworthiness of Web search sites, it is strongly recommended for Google to be aware of the "social responsibility" to achieve a comprehensive level of transparency in the SERP strategy. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.