Search neutrality broadly describes the subject of skewing search engine results to favour one website or category of websites over another. The skewing can be done by hand, i.e. maintaining lists of sites to favour or penalise, or by tweaking the algorithms that derive search results.
Discussions tend to fall into three brackets:
- Should search engines "clean up" results to remove infringing or unlawful content?
- How can accountants and business owners quantify and mitigate search engine dependency risks for businesses whose income is highly dependent on the secret ranking algorithms of search providers, algorithms subject to change without notice?
- Antitrust and whether search engines abuse their role as gatekeepers in order to promote their own goods and services above rivals, and what if anything can be done about this?
Last night's event at
Pictfor in the Grand Committee Room at Parliament focussed on the latter - the potential for market abuse - and heard from Shivaun Raff, co-founder and CEO of
Foundem, a British
vertical search engine (categorised search - a type of price comparison site for any product), security consultant and blogger
Alec Muffett and internet veteran entrepreneur
Mark Margaretten.
