Page Quality: In Search of an Unbiased Web Ranking

In a number of recent studies [4, 8] researchers have found that because search engines repeatedly return currently popular pages at the top of search results, popular pages tend to get even more popular, while unpopular pages get ignored by an average user. This “rich-get-richer” phenomenon is particularly problematic for new and high-quality pages because they may never get a chance to get users’ attention, decreasing the overall quality of search results in the long run. In this paper, we propose a new ranking function, called page quality that can alleviate the problem of popularity-based ranking. We first present a formal framework to study the search engine bias by discussing what is an “ideal” way to measure the intrinsic quality of a page. We then compare how PageRank, the current ranking metric used by major search engines, differs from this ideal quality metric. This framework will help us investigate the search engine bias in more concrete terms and provide clear...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: SIGMOD
• Authors: Junghoo Cho, Sourashis Roy, Robert Adams
• Keywords: Database, Pages, Search Engine, Search Engine Bias, SIGMOD 2005