Readability and word complexity of SERPs snippets and web pages on children’s search queries. Google vs Bing
| Date | 18 March 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-05-2018-0124 |
| Published date | 18 March 2019 |
| Pages | 241-259 |
| Author | Dania Bilal,Li-Min Huang |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Readability and word complexity
of SERPs snippets and web pages
on children’s search queries
Google vs Bing
Dania Bilal and Li-Min Huang
School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
Tennessee, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to analyze the readability and level of word complexity of search
engine results pages (SERPs) snippets and associated web pages between Google and Bing.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors employed the Readability Test Tool to analyze the
readability and word complexity of 3,000 SERPs snippets and 3,000 associated pages in Google and Bing
retrieved on 150 search queries issued by middle school children.
Findings –A significant difference was found in the readability of SERPs snippets and associated web
pages between Google and Bing. A significant difference was also observed in the number of complex words
in snippets between the two engines but not in associated web pages. At the engine level, the readability of
Google and Bing snippets was significantly higher than associated web pages. The readability of Google
SERPs snippets was at a much higher level than those of Bing. The readability of snippets in both engines
mismatched with the reading comprehension of children in grades 6–8.
Research limitations/implications –The data corpus may be small. Analysis relied on quantitative measures.
Practical implications –Practitioners and other mediators should mitigate the readability issue in SERPs
snippets. Researchers should consider text readability and word complexity simultaneously with other
factors to obtain the nuanced understanding of young users’web information behaviors. Additional
theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.
Originality/value –This study measured the re adability and the level o f word complexity embedd ed
in SERPs snippets and com pared them to respectiv e web pages in Google and Bi ng. Findings provide
further evidence of the r eadability issue of SERPs snippets a nd the need to solve this issue through s ystem
design improvements.
Keywords Google, Children, Readability, Bing, Search queries, SERPs snippets,
Search engine results pages, Web text readability and word complexity
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Measuring the readability of web text has gained much attention in the past years, given
the enormous amount of information availableonlineandtheuseofsearchenginesas
primary tools for finding information on the internet. In the USA, Google and
Bing dominate the search market on the internet. As of 2018, nearly 50 percent of the
global population accessed the internet to find information. This rate is expected to
increase to nearly 55 percent by 2021 (Mangles, 2018). A report by the US National Center
for Education Statistics (2018) estimated that about 71 percent of children aged 3–18 used
the internet in various settings in 2015 (e.g. home, school, library and coffee shop). For the
majority of children, Google is the most preferred search engine (Gwizdka and Bilal, 2017).
Bing is Google’s competitor and has received a wide popularity in the USA in recent
years[1]. Like other web searchengines,GoogleandBingretrieve and display snippets
or brief summaries of results based on a user’ssearchquery.Asnippetisextracted
from different parts of a web page and/or from the first few lines of text using metadata
description (Balestrino, 2017). A search engine results page (SERP) consists of ten or more
snippets per page depending on the search engine. SERP snippets are displayed in a
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 71 No. 2, 2019
pp. 241-259
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-05-2018-0124
Received 29 May 2018
Revised 17 October 2018
Accepted 7 January 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
241
Readability
and word
complexity
ranking order based on the ranking algorithm that a search engine employs. The engines
do not account for the readability (level of difficulty) of the snippets during query
processing and information retrieval, raising an issue of reading comprehension of
web text, especially for young users (Bilal, 2013; Collins-Thompson et al., 2011; Vajjala and
Meurers, 2013).
Information seeking using web search engines has become the norm. In seeking
information, one needs to read or scan SERPs in order to make a decision on whether to
click on a specific result. Many studies have explored the online reading behavior of adults
in various contexts, including information seeking (see e.g.Cole et al., 2010, Gwizdka et al.,
2017; Lopatovska and Sessions, 2016); and of children (Bilal, 2000; Bilal and Gwizdka,
2016; Coiro, 2014; Coiro and Dobler, 2007; Dobler and Eagleton, 2015; Gossen, 2015;
Rouet et al., 2011). More recently, researchers have focused on examining the effect of
reading skills in the context of evaluating and selectingrelevant information (Hahnel et al.,
2018; Salmerón et al., 2017). Yet, we still know very little about the readability and level of
complexity of SERPs snippets and associated web pages for middle school children’s
reading comprehension.
There is evidence to suggest that children face myriad challenges in seeking
information on the web (see e.g. Bilal and Gwizdka, 2016; Cole et al., 2017; Coiro, 2014;
Coiro and Dobler, 2007; Druin et al., 2009; Foss and Druin, 2014; Gossen, 2015; Gossen and
Nürnberger, 2013; Gwizdka and Bilal, 2017). The fact that the readability of web text is
beyond these young users’reading comprehension levels (Bilal, 2013; Vajjala and
Meurers, 2013) and the vanishing of Google Reading Level filter in 2015 (Schwartz, 2015)
make the readability and complexity of SERPs and web pages an important subject for
investigation. While much research has compared Bing and Google retrieved results in
terms of ranking and retrieval performance (see Bilal, 2012; Lewandowski, 2008, 2015),
scant work has compared the readability and level of complexity of Google and Bing’s
SERPs snippets and associated web pages on children’s search queries to identify how
well they match with their reading comprehension or grade levels.
The purposes of this study are to: investigate and compare the readability of SERPs
snippets and associated web pages in Google and Bing, identify the level of word
complexity in SERPs snippets and associated web pages in Google and Bing, explore
whether the readability and level of word complexity of SERPs snippets retrieved on the
search queries in both search engines agree with those embedded in the associated web
pages and. identify the extent to which the readability and word complexity of SERPs
snippets and associated web pages in Google and Bing match with middle school
children’s readings comprehension or grade levels.
Readability and text complexity affect student performance and comprehension
(Reed and Kershaw-Herrera, 2016) and reading fluency (Amendum et al., 2018). Analyzing
the readability of SERPs and associated web pages for search queries that middle school
children construct in search engines will provide an indirect tangible assessment of what
they expect to find, and the extent to which what they find matches with their reading
comprehension or grade levels.
Findings from this study have practical, theoretical and methodological implications,
which are discussed in the Implications section of this paper.
Related work
A significant body of work has employed computational methods to measure and predict the
readability of web text (see e.g. Collins-Thompson, 2014; Collins-Thompson et al., 2011;
Collins-Thompson and Callan, 2004; Tan et al., 2012; Schumacher et al., 2016). Collins-Thompson
(2014) provided a comprehensive review of the literature on computational assessment of
readability, covering the whole gamut of readability research. He highlighted the need for future
242
AJIM
71,2
To continue reading
Request your trial