The twin issues of fairness and bias in search engines has come to the forefront this week with 2 threads. Homer's twitching eyes and nervous hands should give you an idea of how the SEs might feel addressing these sensitive issues.

The first, Defensive Tactics Used by the Search Engines at SEOChat initially focuses on the types of penalty monitoring and instituting systems the search engines use - everything from Google's sandbox to spam reports to over-optimization penalties. As the thread progresses, however, posters question the fairness of trustrank and wonder if natural bias precludes a system like TrustRank from ever operating successfully.

The second, Google News Unbiased When Blogs Left Out? at SEW, looks at a recent study from Brad Hill on the subject of Google News' fairness. Posters argue over the interpretation of the data and whether Google should be including or actively excluding extreme viewpoints on either side, which typically are found in non-traditional news sources like blogs.

These aren't issues that can be wrapped up quickly and will probably continue to plague search for many years to come. Recongizing bias is, however, the first step to overcoming it. When preference goes un-noticed is when it can be the most damaging.