The Power of Search Engines

Jenny Fry, Shefali Virkar and

Ralph Schroeder
Oxford Internet Institute
AoIR 2006

Googlearchy?
Internet as democratizing access to
knowledge
What do hyperlinks represent?
Hyperlinks as capital
Role of search in accessing information
Do Internet Search Engines mirror offline
hierarchies or produce new online
hierarchies?

Web Search Behaviour

66% of sites seen by single user 0.2%
seen by more than 100 users
(Beauvisage)
Internet users behave conservatively as
searchers
(Pew Internet Survey, 2005)
The extended home range
(Beauvisage)
Few users are aware of the
financial incentives that affect
how search engines perform
(WebWatch)

How Domain Experts Access Expertise on the

Internet?
Four global issues: Climate Change, Terrorism,
HIV/AIDS, Internet and Society
Triangulation of cybermetric and interview data
(from 20 UK-based academic researchers)
Network perspective of key people, institutions
and resources online
Participants mental model of their domain their
individual perception of what constitutes the core
set of resources and sources (including online,
offline and people).

A Webmetric Perspective
Identification of information cliques
Power law distribution?
Indication of winner-take-all hypothesis,
but;
Social and institutional phenomena
underlying hyperlink patterns are difficult
to interpret (Thelwall, 2006)

Webgraph of Climate Change

Validation of Webmetric Perspective

Five researchers from
each domain
Questions relating to:
research background,
key institutions, groups
and people in their
research networks,
and the variety of
online resources they
used
Validation of Google
representation of each
domains web presence
Google top 30 URLs for
each domain

Climate
Change

Climate change, Global

warming, Ozone
depletionInternet

Internet
and
Society

Internet and Society,

Internet Research,
Internet Studies

HIV/AIDS HIV/AIDS, HIV

Infection, HIV
Prevention
Terrorism

Terrorism, Terrorist
Organisations, Terrorist
Network

Distribution of Top Level Country Code Domain

Names
Top Level Country Code Domain Name
.org

.com .gov

.edu

Other

13
Climate
Change
Internet and 6
Society
12
HIV / AIDS

10

14

.ca (3), .int(2)

12

.mil(2), .net(1),
.gov.uk(1), .tr(1)

Terrorism

.co(1), .ca(1), .ac(1),

.ch(1), .int(2), .net(2)

Web-base Search Strategies

Similarities in practice across four domains, but also
important differences
HIV/AIDs researchers go to PubMed in first instance Google an aide memoir in pathway to known sources
Terrorism, Google plays a more central role in
excavating the information environment
Scatter of literature across domain boundaries as an
explanation for difference in use of Google?
In low scatter fields (e.g. HIV/AIDS) resources and
sources can be found using a well-defined set of
keywords and are likely to be produced by a limited
number of dominant gatekeepers
In high scatter fields (e.g. Terrorism) resources and
sources scattered across a number of disciplines
terminology for same concept may vary researchers
tend to follow a particular conversation across a variety
of information environments

Differential Role of Gatekeepers

The characteristics and role of dominant
gatekeepers varied across domains
Differentiated shift towards the decentralization
of gatekeepers on the internet e.g.
climate change hybrid research centres
Internet and society policy or academic research
centres
Terrorism government departments and non-profit
organisation important for grey lit., but publishers
continue to play pivotal role in dissemination
HIV/AIDS traditional gatekeepers persist, but
consumer movement in health reflected in websphere

Centralised Vs De-centralised Gatekeepers

Health Protection
Agency

Researchers
homepages

PubMed
NHS

Internet and
Society

HIV/AIDS

Centralised

Non-profit
organisations
(M.P.I.T)
Websites of
terrorist groups

Pew Internet
Survey

EuroSTAT

De-centralised

Terrorism
Government
Agencies (U.S.
State Dept.)

Routledge

International News
Services

Climate Change
The World Bank

International
Energy Agency

Planned landscape or unkempt wilderness?

Differentiated winner takes all effect
In domains where search and other forms of
information seeking are highly focused (scientistic)
online resources, such as literature databases, are
likely to be highly structured and the information
environment is likely to be well-defined
In contrast, where search follows a particular
conversation, rather than set of core concepts,
sources and resources are scattered and the
information environment is an undomesticated
wilderness)
Google as facilitator versus Google as an influential
gatekeeper

Outlook
The Impact of search on society?
Information ecologies?
What structures are being produced and
by whom?

Governance and the Internet?