Posted by
Nevyana Karakasheva
Search engines are the gatekeepers to the world knowledge
shared on the web. We are so used to relying on search engines’
“recommendations” when browsing online that we tend to rarely question the
algorithms they use to compile those lists of results. But taking for granted a
service that you “feed and breed on” is a risky path to take.
There are two distinct types of search engines that we are
to cover today. On one hand we have the search engines that offer the so-called
personalized search service. They filter their search results to a custom
version that varies depending on the given user profile. On the other we have
the search engines that respect their users’ privacy and offer them uniform
results.
The Personalized Search
The best example of a search engine offering personalized
search results, is also the undisputed leader in the search engine industry:
Google. There is hardly an online user out there that hasn’t used Google, and
there is practically a handful of countries where Google does not dominate the
search engine market (countries like South Korea, China, Russia and the Czech
Republic have national
search engines).
What is personalized
search?
The process of personalization before anything else requires
having in-depth knowledge of the active online users. In order to profile them
correctly Google has to access some private information by tracking, recording
and keeping on file the online activities, preferences, information shared,
read and commented by its users.
In the image below you can look up the majority of data that
Google collects on its users including: personal, financial, activity-related,
device, location and interaction info.
Once Google has managed to assess a given user’s “character”
it compiles a custom set of results for each of his queries. The uniqueness of
the results and their relevance to the user’s interests, search history and
location are prime characteristics of the personalized search.
What are the benefits of
the personalized search?
Personalized search saves time.
Google, as a personalized search engine, tries to render
results that you’d definitely like. This includes not only presenting you with
info sources that you prefer but with topics and opinions that you have already
shown interest in.
So instead of you hunting down valuable info online, Google
is trying to make sense of what you define as “valuable” and conduct the search
for you. It interprets the particular context you are aiming as well as which
sites would best address your query. It places the best options on top of its
search results and voila: you have your own custom bookshelf in the
WorldWideWeb library.
What are the threats of
the personalized search?
The personalized search puts you into an informational filter
bubble.
With personalized search your information horizon is limited
to a few sites and topics that the search engine “knows” you like and you’d
never get a chance to see/read an alternative point of view. This filter bubble
could make you prejudiced without you can even realize it. Reading what you
like could be fun but it will only separate you from the real world, it will
dull your senses and limit knowledge.
In the image below you can see a brief privacy comparison
between the personalized search engine Google and the privacy-oriented
DuckDuckGo:
THE PRIVATE SEARCH
With the growing privacy awareness of the today online user
considering an alternative search engine becomes more and more popular of a
trend. Below you can see the general predispositions of the online user towards
issues like online privacy, sensitive data collection and its distribution to
third parties as well as falling a victim to targeted ads as a result of the
detailed search engine profiling.
But what does private search
actually stand for?
Simply put the private search engines don’t track
or”investigate” your persona. There is no profiling process involved in your
interaction with them.
When a user types a search query, he gets uniform results
that would be rendered to each and every other online users that have used the
same search phrase. The users might be living in different continents, they
could be farmers or Street brokers: regardless of their interests and location
as long as they use the same search query, they will have access to the same
search results.
What are the benefits of
the private search?
The advantages of not having your personal data collected
are pretty obvious, you won’t get targeted ads following you all around the web; government won’t be able to obtain your location, your content
sharing, commenting, posting and reading activities.
With private search engines you face the opportunity of not
leaving a footprint while browsing online.
What are the threats of
the private search?
The core benefit of the private search engines like
DuckDuckGo is often considered by some to be also its main disadvantage.
Unfortunately many people are used to the personalized search results and do
not even suspect what kind of price they pay for this “custom” service. They
see private search engines as crippled service providers because they fail to
“digest” the information according to their specific taste.
But let’s see the concerns online users face both with
Google (a personalized search engine) and DuckDuckGo (a private search engine).
If you wish, you can skim through the whole infographic
comparison between Google and DuckDuckGo and learn a bit more about the
online privacy issues of our modern society.
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