Performance evaluation and comparison of the five most used search engines in retrieving web resources
| Published date | 28 September 2010 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521011084609 |
| Date | 28 September 2010 |
| Pages | 757-771 |
| Author | Sanjib K. Deka,Narendra Lahkar |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Performance evaluation
and comparison of the five most
used search engines in retrieving
web resources
Sanjib K. Deka
Central Library, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India, and
Narendra Lahkar
Department of Library and Information Science, Gauhati University,
Guwahati, India
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the performance and efficiency of the five most
used search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo!, Live, Ask, and AOL, in retrieving internet resources at
specific points of time using a large number of complex queries.
Design/methodology/approach – In order to examine the performance of the five search engines,
five sets of experiments were conducted using 50 complex queries within two different time frames.
The data were evaluated using Excel and SPSS software.
Findings – The paper results highlight the fact that different web search engines, which use differe nt
technology to find and present web information, yield different first page search results. The overall
analysis of the findings of different measures reveals that Google has a significantly higher rate of
performance in retrieving web resources as compared with the other four search engines. Yahoo! is the
second best in terms of retrieval performance. The other three search engines did not performed
satisfactorily compared with Google and Yahoo!
Originality/value – The paper will provide important insight into the effectiveness of major search
engines and their ability to retrieve relevant internet resources. This paper has produced key findings
that are important for all web search engine users and researchers, and the web industry. The findings
will also assist search companies to improve their services.
Keywords Worldwide web,Search engines, Information retrieval
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The astonishing growth of the web propelled the rapid development of web search
engines. It has been observed in the literature that most users view search engines as the
best method available for finding information on the web. However, the evaluation of
these search engines has not been keeping up with the pace of their development. The
significance of the evaluation of web search engines is twofold: to help web users in their
choice of search engines and to inform the development of search algorithms and search
engines. The goal of this paper is to conduct a large-scale study to measure the
performance and efficiency of search engines on the first result page across the five most
popular web search engines, at specific points of time using a large number of complex
queries. For this study, specific sets of measurements have been taken into consideration
to evaluate the performance of the five selected search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo!, Live,
Ask, and AOL.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
Five most used
search engines
757
Refereed article received
28 July 2009
Approved for publication
26 April 2010
Online Information Review
Vol. 34 No. 5, 2010
pp. 757-771
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684521011084609
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