Extending the concept of net neutrality to search engines, a group of national organizations under the umbrella of Minority Media and Telecommunications Council have said that Google and other search engines were "heavily biased towards established brands" and failed to give a fair search engine optimization (SEO) shake to less wealthy businesses, especially those owned by ethnic minorities.
A report filed with the FCC by the MMTC states that "search engine practices that assign visibility to businesses based on wealth rather than merit would impose a classic cycle of invisibility to minority enterprises: without access to capital they cannot secure visibility; but without visibility they cannot secure access to capital."
However, search engine optimization (SEO) professionals like Greg Stirling of Search Engine Land say that those conclusions ignore several logical steps, and that the MMTC has no proof that "SERP visibility equals access to capital."
Search engine optimization (SEO), others say, is based around an automated technology that is more or less incapable of discriminating based on the ethnicity of business owners. However, others say that disparities in available resources are still problematic.
