How Different Search Engines Display and Prioritize Information

Table of Links

Abstract and Introduction

Literature Review

Objectives and Research Questions

Methods

Results

Discussion

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.