Bias

A prejudice based on experiences or a particular worldview.

Any media channel, publishing format, organization, or person is biased by

• how and why they were created and their own experiences
• the current set of social standards in which they exist
• other markets they operate in
• the need for self preservation
• how they interface with the world around them
• their capital, knowledge, status, or technological advantages and limitations

Search engines aim to be relevant to users, but they also need to be profitable. Since search engines sell commercial ads some of the largest search engines may bias their "organic search results" toward informational (ie: non-commercial) websites. Some search engines are also biased toward information which has been published online for a great deal of time and is heavily cited.

"Search personalization" biases our search results based on our own media consumption and searching habits.

Large news organizations tend to aim for widely acceptable neutrality rather than objectivity. Some of the most popular individual web authors / publishers tend to be quite biased in nature. Rather than bias hurting one's exposure

• The known / learned bias of a specific author may make their news more appealing than news from an organization that aimed to seem arbitrarily neutral.
• I believe biased channels most likely typically have a larger readership than unbiased channels.
• Most people prefer to subscribe to media which matches their own biases worldview.
• If more people read what you write and passionately agree with it then they are more likely to link at it.
• Things which are biased in nature are typically easier to be cited than things which are unbiased.

See also:

• Alejandro M. Diaz's Through the Google Goggles [PDF] - thesis paper on Google's biases
• A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History - looks at economic, biological, and linguistic history
• Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky DVD and book about mainstream media bias toward business interests
• Comparison of the major search algorithms
• Wikipedia: Bias