"in 2006, Google’s supposedly objective algorithms suddenly dropped Foundem into the netherworld of Google search results. They say Google also raised the rates Foundem had to pay to advertise alongside search results. These moves, the couple say, pushed their comparison shopping site out of view, and Google later put the spotlight on its own shopping listings."Thiscouple raised an interesting issue of search neutrality. How to define search neutrality. According to them, search neutrality is
Specifically,"the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet."
The idea of regulation on search control has important implications to the Web. Shall Google have impartial attitude to all Web sites it listed on its search outcome? How to define impartial here? It seems we use Google is not because Google give us impartial results, it is because Google help us find things we want to find easier compared with other search engine. As to whether this result is being manipulated by Google, most users probably do not care about. To certain extent, all search outcome are manipulated by certain algorithms. In the case of Google, it is PageRank plus some proprietary tweaks we don't know."search neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, search engines should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, search engines should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online."
Our investigation showed that leading shopping engines, including Shopzilla.com, Shopping.com,PriceGrabber.com, and Yahoo Shopping, frequently award accolades to companies with spotty records. Nearly a third of the merchants that came up in our searches for popular consumer electronics on Yahoo Shopping, for example, had "unsatisfactory" ratings with the BBB.
What's the source of the problem? Shopping engines depend on customer ratings to make these recommendations--and ratings and reviews can be faked by interested parties. That isn't a new phenomenon, but unfortunately, we found evidence that some shopping engines--despite their claims to the contrary--are still being manipulated to get customers to visit certain online stores.
When we asked Shopzilla how a company with an unsatisfactory BBB rating could earn its "Smart Choice" seal, Shopzilla spokesperson Helen Malani said, "Ratings and reviews are just one component in the shopper's decision-making process." She wouldn't say whether recommending Butterfly Photo, in retrospect, was a mistake.
Shopzilla, however, wasn't the only engine recommending Butterfly Photo. When we searched on Shopping.com for a Samsung 32-inch television, Butterfly Photo's offering again earned special attention, showing up in the search results as a "Smart Buy." The "Smart Buy" seal, according to Shopping.com, indicates that the search result is the lowest available price from a "Trusted Store." Shopping.com's sibling sites, Dealtime.com andPricetool.com, also displayed Butterfly Photo's price with the Trusted Store logo. NexTag.com and its sibling site, Calibex.com, show "Trusted Seller" logos that indicate Butterfly Photo has received positive customer ratings, displays accurate prices, and "address[es] customer service complaints quickly and fairly."Though even shopbot owners are aware there are fake ratings, detecting them is usually difficult. Finding duplicate ratings and comments and delete them is one method. Bad vendors could be removed from the listing. However, bad vendors soon change their names as new companies and being listed again. It is even more shocking to see one comment to the article:
Change you passwords when using these sites. I posted a very negative review of a purchase I had made at a store called Computer Geeks on PriceGrabber. The next day a nice, happy review was up with my name on it. I had used the same user name and password for both sites. To PriceGrabbers credit they did replace the glowing review with my original, you just can't see it on page two, which is inaccessible (maybe today only), and page one is loaded with 100% positive posts which appear to be just as fake as the one that replaced mine.There are also social and economics issues in entangled with this issue. The comparison-shopping service providers has little incentive to pay a hefty cost to detect and prevent fraudulent ratings because it is not just costly but also don't generate short-term profit. However, in the long run, the reputation and credibility of shopbot service sector will be damaged if consumers found out they were cheated frequently by such information.
