169). .
But politics always dictates all societies including the most democratic ones, and the struggle for choice and the accessibility of those choices has intensified. Searching the Internet through these helpful engines is defined by three important criteria. First, authors must link their pages to other pages; second, engines must appropriately index and rank the countless pages a 'surfer' encounters; and third, surfers must sufficiently be rewarded by having their inquiries accurately rewarded with timely information (Gerhart, 2003). Web-page providers compete for limited recognition by search engines that are achieved through indexing and ranking the top 10-20 search results (Introna and Nissenbaum, 2000). If a particular search engine has not indexed a web page, the searcher, seeker, or surfer, must know its Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which is its complete Internet address (Introna and Nissenbaum, 2000). Search engines construct what amounts to a map of the World Wide Web by indexing pages according to keywords that generate databases that link the contents of the pages to the keywords to finally the URL (Introna and Nissenbaum, 2000). .
One factor that significantly increases the number of listings involves the number of links (inlinks and outlinks) a particular web page has, and how full a particular information category happens to be (Introna and Nissenbaum, 2000). According to a study conducted by Harvard Digital Government researchers, the Web is essentially "dominated by a few gatekeeper and winner "take "all link "accumulating sites "(Gerhart, 2003). Basically, what this means is that the more links a site has, the greater 'share' of Web dominance it enjoys (Gerhart, 2003). For example, a study in which the controversial topics of abortion and gun control were researched on a search engine through what is known as 'web crawling' only a few major sites generated the greatest number of in-links, which means the surfers are drawn to these large sites rather than 'hitting' smaller sites that might provide a greater diversity of information (Gerhart, 2003).
