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How Different Search Engines Display and Prioritize Information
by Browserology: Study & Science of Internet BrowsersMay 11th, 2024
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The study compares Google with alternative search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Metager to analyze differences in source diversity, top sources, and source concentration in top search results. The comparison provides insights into ranking algorithms and preferred domains across search engines.
Authors:
(1) Yagci, Nurce, HAW Hamburg, Germany & [email protected];
(2) Sünkler, Sebastian, HAW Hamburg, Germany & [email protected];
(3) Häußler, Helena, HAW Hamburg, Germany & [email protected];
(4) Lewandowski, Dirk, HAW Hamburg, Germany & [email protected].
Table of Links
Objectives and Research Questions
Conclusion, Research Data, Acknowledgments, and References
OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Our study addresses the following research questions:
1. Do top results from alternative search engines differ from Google's in regard to the number of unique sources?
2. Do top results from alternative search engines differ from Google's in regard to top sources?
3. Do top results from alternative search engines differ from Google's in regard to source concentration, i.e., are results distributed over more or fewer sources in different search engines?
To answer these questions, we selected three alternative search engines to compare to Google. Aside from Bing, which is the biggest competitor to Google, we chose DuckDuckGo and Metager. DuckDuckGo uses results from Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex, and has the added benefit of advanced privacy settings such as non-personalized results. Metager, a German meta-search engine, aggregates results from several search engines, including Bing and Yandex. As such, either search engine might provide a more varied set of sources. Since the alternative search engines each have an index different from Google's, the comparison will give insights into what domains are favored by Google and which domains are excluded. Also, we will gain insights into the differences in ranking between them.
This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license.
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