What does Google recommend when you want to compare insurance offerings?. A study investigating source distribution in Google’s top search results
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-07-2018-0172 |
| Pages | 310-324 |
| Date | 20 May 2019 |
| Published date | 20 May 2019 |
| Author | Dirk Lewandowski,Sebastian Sünkler |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
What does Google recommend
when you want to compare
insurance offerings?
A study investigating source distribution
in Google’s top search results
Dirk Lewandowski and Sebastian Sünkler
Department of Information,
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to describe a new method to improve the analysis of search engine
results by considering the provider level as well as the domain level. This approach is tested by conducting a
study using queries on the topic of insurance comparisons.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors conducted an empirical study that analyses the results of
search queries aimed at comparing insurance companies. The authors used a self-developed software system that
automatically queries commercial search engines and automatically extracts the content of the returned result
pages for further data analysis. The data analysis was carriedout using the KNIME Analytics Platform.
Findings –Google’s top search results are served by only a few providers that frequently appear in these
results. The authors show that some providers operate several domains on the same topic and that these
domains appear for the same queries in the result lists.
Research limitations/implications –The authors demonstrate the feasibility of this approach and draw
conclusions for further investigations from the empirical study. However, the study is a limited use case based
on a limited number of search queries.
Originality/value –The proposed method allows large-scale analysis of the composition of the top results
from commercial search engines. It allows using valid empirical data to determine what users actually see on
the search engine result pages.
Keywords Search engines, Google, Search engine results pages, Results ranking,
Search results concentration, Web scraping
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
On a theoretical level, search engines can be seen as intermediaries between users and the
information objects scattered on the web. The task of search engines is the collection
(crawling), preparation (indexing), evaluation (ranking) and provision (user interface) of
these information objects. In this sense, search engines are usually regarded as neutral
intermediaries (Halavais, 2018; Lewandowski, 2017), which rank search results in a way that
can be regarded as objective in the sense that each information object in the index is treated
according to the same criteria and thus has at least potentially the same chance of being
displayed for a query on a particular position. However, search engine optimization (SEO)
methods, in particular, have a considerable influence on the ranking of commercial search
engines, and SEO can have both positive and negative effects.
The importanceof the question about the influence on searchresults of commercial search
engines results from the importance of search engines themselves, and the importance of
Google as the dominantsearch engine, which reachesa market share of morethan 90 percent
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 71 No. 3, 2019
pp. 310-324
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-07-2018-0172
Received 18 July 2018
Revised 28 February 2019
Accepted 9 April 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
Dirk Lewandowski, being Editor-in Chief of Aslib Journal of Information Management, was uninvolved
in the review process, which was handled entirely by Joachim Griesbaum and Isabella Peters, the other
guest editors of this special issue.
310
AJIM
71,3
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