Search engine coverage bias: evidence and possible causes
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A lack of reproducibility can indicate a form of sampling bias or so-called search engine bias: Repeated tests of the same query can lead to different results.
“A lack of reproducibility can indicate a form of sampling bias or so‐called search engine bias27, 28: Repeated tests of the same query can lead to different results.( 29 , p37)”
Google's PageRank system may only identify popular self-referencing communities, which has bias against newer online content.
“First, in step 3 of the method, Google’s PageRank system may only identify popular self-referencing communities, which as noted by some researchers has bias against newer online content [16].”
From Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0: Tensions and Controversies in the Field (2008) · cites this paper as [16]
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 37 · Cited by 259
- Authors
- Vaughan, L., & Thelwall, M.
- Affiliations
- Western University (CA)
- University of Wolverhampton (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Vaughan, Liwen
- Venue
- Information Processing & Management
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2004-07
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 693-707
- ISSN
- 0020-0271 (ISSN-L)
- 0306-4573
- OpenAlex
- W2031160476
- Cited by
- 259
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 26.36
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Information Processing & Management (publishedVersion)
- Scholarship@Western (Western University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information Retrieval and Search Behavior
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web visibility and informetrics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web Data Mining and Analysis
- Keywords
- commercial search engines, national bias, link counts, Matthew effect
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
