Results differ 'dramatically' between search engines

1 June 2007

Popular search engines deliver very different results, a new study has found.

Research by InfoSpace, conducted by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Queensland University of Technology, revealed a less than one per cent overlap in first page results on Google, Yahoo!, Windows Live and Ask.

In fact, only 0.6 per cent of 776,435 first page search results were the same across the four search engines.

According to InfoSpace, the findings highlight the benefits of metasearch engines, which deliver the top results from each of the leading search engines.

Rod Diefendorf, vice-president of online and local search at InfoSpace, commented: "This study reinforces what we at InfoSpace have long known - often users do not find the results they need with any single search engine."

The vice-president said that metasearch engines are able to "quickly comb through multiple search engines at once for the most relevant results", offering a "robust" and "efficient" solution for internet searches.

When compared to a similar study conducted in 2005, the latest research indicates that there is even less overlap between the major search engines than there was two years ago.

Category: Google, MSN, Other, Search engines, Yahoo