Search bubbles

Even if you don’t use DuckDuckGo as your search engine, you have to love the DuckDuckGo people for their spunk.  Some people think that DuckDuckGo is actually owned and run by a conscience-stricken group from Google, since their respective corporate senses of humor seem to be similar. Well, even if were true that DuckDuckGo and Google were owned by the same people, both would deny it. And we don’t know nuthin’, I tells ya!

Anyway…

When you search using Google, Google filter’s your search results by your bubble. Your bubble is everything you click – ads, news articles, Facebook “Likes”, Twitter “reTweets” and everything you post on social media (Facebook Twitter, etc.) and everything you buy or look at. Yep. Everything you helps Google build your bubble and everything you search for using Google is filtered through your own bubble.

For instance. You’re a conservative, Jennifer is a liberal, and I am an independent. Let’s say we all search of Google for “News Sites”. You’re going to results filtered by your bubble – you’ll most likely see Fox News and other conservative-leaning news sites listed first; Jennifer will most likely see MSNBC and other liberal sites listed first. I will most likely see CNN listed first. The theory behind this is we all want to see what we like. We like, I guess, to hear people preaching to the choir.  Google got mighty big by trying to show you what you like, first. This makes you think – “Hey! This is cool. Fox News is number one! Oh I love that Bill O’Reilly guy!” or if you’re Jennifer you say “Oh, Google is so cool. MSNBC is number one! I love that Rachel Maddow lady.” So, really, it makes Google seem tailor made for you because it appears that you’re finding exactly what you want and it’s true- what you want to see is what you see. But when you search for things it should be an unbiased search, but it’s not, because everything is filtered through your bubble.

In other words, what you see, is based who Google thinks you are, what you like and what you want to see:

Bubbles are not exclusive to Google — Yahoo, Bing and others do the same thing; DuckDuckGo is one of the few who don’t.

For a really good explanation of Search Bubbles see DuckDuckGo’s article here.