Jun 1, 2007 at 9:45am ET by Greg Sterling
InfoSpace-owned metasearch engine Dogpile, which recently refreshed its homepage and made other, minor changes, published the results of its second “search overlap” study. The first study, released in 2005 and commissioned from the University of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania State University, found that 84.9 percent of results on search engines were unique to one engine and not found on competitor sites. The study involved Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask and also found that among 12,570 random user-defined queries just over 1 percent of first page search results were the same across the engines.
The 2007 study has found further divergence and even less overlap: only 0.6 percent first page search results were the same across the engines.
Here’s a high-level summary of the findings of the April, 2007 study, this time conducted in conjunction with Queensland University of Technology and Pennsylvania State University:
The majority of first page results are unique:
Top search result was different across engines:
Only 3.6 percent of the #1 ranked non-sponsored search results were the same across all search engines for a given query, down from 7.0 percent in the July 2005 overlap study.
Sponsored links on Google and Yahoo:
You can find the complete study here.
Share, Bookmark & Discuss This Article
More:
Keep Updated: News Via Email | News Via RSS Feed | News Via Twitter
See more stories like this in the Members Library! Check out the Search Engines: Meta Search Engines, Stats: Relevancy sections of the Members Library where this story is filed. Members also get access to exclusive video content, a members-only weekly & monthly newsletter, plus more. Check out all the benefits!
TOP STORIES
SEARCH NEWS BRIEFS
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
RECENT COMMENTS
SearchCap is a once-per-day newsletter update:
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
SMX Web Site » | SMX Difference » | SMX News »
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:
Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Search Marketing Now. Upcoming online events include:
Featured sites from our Blogroll
Become a premium member today and receive:
The report is based on data from two years ago. Both Google and Yahoo! have implemented a lot of algorithmic changes since then (and Google has redesigned its search engine twice in that time frame). Ask is also about to unleash a new algorithm (if it hasn’t turned on Edison yet).
This report is neither very relevant nor very interesting for those reasons. It would help tremendously if they do the study again based on 2007 search results (and publish the report in 2007, not 2009).
If you read the study, you will see that data for the study was compiled in April 2007. Please see the second paragraph of the paper.