Google Searches and Brexit
A study was recently done on Google searches on phrases relating to Brexit. There was a strong bias towards pro-EU results, however. Of all of the top results, 29.4 percent were from BBC, which has been found in the past to be anti-Brexit. The other top results also include news companies that are biased toward staying in the European Union as well such as The Guardian and The Independent. Brexiteers are furious at Google for “taking a stance” on the search results for a political issue, possibly biasing others who inquire about Brexit. People who are unknowledgeable on the subject will most likely be directed to websites that lean very much to one side, and that is not the way a search engine should work. It should be fully unbiased, showing only the best results.
This relates to our unit in class on PageRank. The results that Google shows should be ranked based on how websites link to each other. The top result should be the website that the most top-rated websites reference themselves. Instead, it seems as though Google is altering the search results to show results that are not necessarily the best results. One would expect that the top results would be evenly distributed between both sides, pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit. However, it seems that this is not the case. No one outside Google knows exactly how they use PageRank, but it does seem as though they are not following it in this case, and they are creating a biased search engine.