Over the past decade or so, an increasing amount of information has been published and communicated on the World Wide Web. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing are have become the most important gateways for accessing the web. Primarily, the ultimate goal of a search engine site is to provide personal and relevant results to the user. However, search engine sites have developed some ethical issues that lead to favoring certain types of sites over others in the results lists they return to consumers in response to search queries. Many users who use search engine sites may assume that they are neutral, but studies conducted on search engine technology argue that search engines are actually biased due to the type of features included in their design (Introna 1) . In an article, “Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matter,” Nissenbaum argued for neutrality by stating that search engine sites “systematically exclude certain sites, and certain types of sites, in favor of others, giving prominence to some to the detriment of others” (1). When a user searches for information on a topic and is directed to one website rather than another on the same topic, search engine bias is created. While there are many potential sources of search engine bias, the practice of paid search is a unique form of search engine bias. Paid advertising encourages online consumers to click on web pages listed favorably in results, not based on the article/website most relevant to their search query. Eszter Hargittai says: “the concern is that search engines driven by profit motives may direct people away from the most relevant and best quality sites in favor of those that have paid the highest bids to rank in the… middle of paper...like Google created on me. However, one expert does not believe that search engine technology is built to be neutral, stating that we should “neither ask for nor expect to receive information that is objective” (Blanke). He states that search engine technology was not designed to do such a thing and that search engines are not capable of providing neutral and objective results (34). Although this expert considers it inept, Eric Goldman sees it as a “beneficial consequence of search engines optimizing content for their users” (Goldman 196). He also claims that customized ranking algorithms recover the effects of search engine bias because there will be multiple search results that are “best” for a particular search instead of a “single winner” (197). Similar to trust, objectivity is a big concern for users, as they dislike the lack of transparency expressed by search engines.