Many search engines such as Google and Bing provide customized results based on the user 's activity history . This leads to an effect that has been called a filter bubble . The term describes a phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see , based on information about the user ( such as location , past click behaviour and search history ) . As a result , websites tend to show only information that agrees with the user 's past viewpoint . This puts the user in a state of intellectual isolation without contrary information . Prime examples are Google 's personalized search results and Facebook 's personalized news stream . According to Eli Pariser , who coined the term , users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble . Pariser related an example in which one user searched Google for " BP " and got investment news about British Petroleum while another searcher got information about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and that the two search results pages were " strikingly different " . The bubble effect may have negative implications for civic discourse , according to Pariser . Since this problem has been identified , competing search engines have emerged that seek to avoid this problem by not tracking or " bubbling " users , such as DuckDuckGo . Other scholars do not share Pariser 's view , finding the evidence in support of his thesis unconvincing
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Web search engine