Worrisome Rich-Get-Richer? Not the True Story!

Search engines have become efficient assistants for people to access information on the Web. Some researchers argue that the prevalence of search engines is setting a tough journey for new pages to become popular even if they are of high quality. However, the evolution of popularity on the Web is not a closed feedback process, and the flexibility of query mechanism of search engines provides a free interface for users to search whatever they are interested in. We show that the diversity and drift of users’ interests actually alleviate the rich-get-richer phenomenon which the popularity-based ranking strategy of search engines tends to make worrisome. The results of our experiments on the query log of a real search engine also confirm our point of view.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: IEEECIT
• Authors: Mingda Wu, Qiancheng Jiang, Yan Zhang
• Keywords: Closed Feedback Process, IEEECIT 2007, Information Technology, Real Search Engine, Search Engine