Search Engines and Filter Bubbles

21^st Century Information Fluency: Search Engines and Filter Bubbles:  

I was very surprised to learn that when using a search engine, such as Google, we aren’t actually searching the live web.  I was always under the impression that when you are searching for information on a certain topic, your results are actual webpages to read from.  However, this isn’t the case at all.  The search engine has made a database of information that comes up when you are searching for information.  It is also alarming to know that all of the information you are looking for may not actually be available since search engines use crawlers and spiders to compile the information for the search engine’s database.  I also assumed that since you are supposedly searching the live web that you are getting fairly current information.  However, this is not the case either.  I was surprised to learn that some information can be years old.  While I am constantly promoting the databases that our school district pays for when students need to look up information, I am beginning to feel that those databases are even more important than previously thought and should be used all the time by students and teachers.

I have never heard of the term “Filter Bubbles” before.  However, somehow I had noticed that this sort of personalized searching was taking place.  As Eli said in the video, Facebook does keep track of what we click on and then it decides what information it thinks we should see.  I didn’t know this same thing was occurring with Internet searching.   I sort of find this irritating for several reasons.  One, how is someone at Facebook supposed to know what I am really interested in without knowing me as a person.  Second, when I am searching for something (Ex. Egypt) I am expecting to get as much information as possible about that country.  The fact that two people go two different results lists was alarming because the filter bubble was trying to personalize the search for the two people.  I don’t think that someone at Facebook or any other website has a right to decide what we are interested in reading about online.  We have to have control over what results we get when we are searching the web for information.