The egalitarian effect of search engines

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dc.creatorFortunato, Santo
dc.creatorFlammini, Alessandro
dc.creatorMenczer, Filippo
dc.creatorVespignani, Alessandro
dc.date2005-11-01
dc.date2006-08-23
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T12:43:38Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T12:43:38Z
dc.descriptionSearch engines have become key media for our scientific, economic, and social activities by enabling people to access information on the Web in spite of its size and complexity. On the down side, search engines bias the traffic of users according to their page-ranking strategies, and some have argued that they create a vicious cycle that amplifies the dominance of established and already popular sites. We show that, contrary to these prior claims and our own intuition, the use of search engines actually has an egalitarian effect. We reconcile theoretical arguments with empirical evidence showing that the combination of retrieval by search engines and search behavior by users mitigates the attraction of popular pages, directing more traffic toward less popular sites, even in comparison to what would be expected from users randomly surfing the Web.
dc.description9 pages, 8 figures, 2 appendices. The final version of this e-print has been published on the Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 103(34), 12684-12689 (2006), http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/34/12684
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0511005
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0511005
dc.identifierdoi:10.1073/pnas.0605525103
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/220488
dc.subjectComputers and Society
dc.subjectInformation Retrieval
dc.subjectPhysics and Society
dc.subjectH.3.3; H.3.4; H.3.5; H.5.4; K.4.m
dc.titleThe egalitarian effect of search engines
dc.typetext

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