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Runaway1956 writes:

Measuring the "Filter Bubble": How Google is influencing what you click

Over the years, there has been considerable discussion of Google's "filter bubble" problem. Put simply, it's the manipulation of your search results based on your personal data. In practice this means links are moved up or down or added to your Google search results, necessitating the filtering of other search results altogether. These editorialized results are informed by the personal information Google has on you (like your search, browsing, and purchase history), and puts you in a bubble based on what Google's algorithms think you're most likely to click on.

The filter bubble is particularly pernicious when searching for political topics. That's because undecided and inquisitive voters turn to search engines to conduct basic research on candidates and issues in the critical time when they are forming their opinions on them. If they’re getting information that is swayed to one side because of their personal filter bubbles, then this can have a significant effect on political outcomes in aggregate.

This is a moderately long read, as web pages go. IMO, it's well worth the time.

Original Submission

The code that we wrote to analyze the data is open source and available on our GitHub repository.

https://github.com/duckduckgo/filter-bubble-study

duckduckgo-filter-bubble-study-2018_participants.xls contains the instructions we sent to each participant, as well as basic anonymized data for each participant.

https://duckduckgo.com/download/duckduckgo-filter-bubble-study-2018_participants.xls

duckduckgo-filter-bubble-study-2018_raw-search-results.xls contains a separate sheet for search results per query and per mode (private and non-private). The results are listed as they appeared on the screen for each participant, showing both organic domains and infoboxes such as Top Stories (news), Videos, etc.

https://duckduckgo.com/download/duckduckgo-filter-bubble-study-2018_raw-search-results.xls