How to Measure the Relevance of Search Engines

The enshittification of online search? Privacy and quality of Google, Bing and Apple in coding advice

Even though currently being challenged by ChatGPT and other large-language models (LLMs), Google Search remains one of the primary means for many individuals to find information on the internet. Interestingly, the way that we retrieve information on the web has hardly changed ever since Google was established in 1998, raising concerns as to Google's dominance in search and lack of competition. If the market for search was sufficiently competitive, then we should probably see a steady increase in search quality over time as well as alternative approaches to the Google's approach to search. However, hardly any research has so far looked at search quality, which is a key facet of a competitive market, especially not over time. In this report, we conducted a relatively large-scale quantitative comparison of search quality of 1,467 search queries relating to coding advice in October 2023. We focus on coding advice because the study of general search quality is difficult, with the aim of learning more about the assessment of search quality and motivating follow-up research into this important topic. We evaluate the search quality of Google Search, Microsoft Bing, and Apple Search, with a special emphasis on Apple Search, a widely used search engine that has never been explored in previous research. For the assessment of search quality, we use two independent metrics of search quality: 1) the number of trackers on the first search result, as a measure of privacy in web search, and 2) the average rank of the first Stack Overflow search result, under the assumption that Stack Overflow gives the best coding advice. Our results suggest that the privacy of search results is higher on Bing than on Google and Apple. Similarly, the quality of coding advice -- as measured by the average rank of Stack Overflow -- was highest on Bing.

Can AI responses be influenced? The SEO industry is trying

Marketing firms are going all in on AI search.

Welcome - OpenWebSearch.eu – Promoting Europe‘s Independence in Web Search

Michael Granitzer University Passau and Open Search Foundation, Coordinator of OpenWebSearch.EU

Global Search Engine Market Share in the Top 15 GDP Nations (2026)

While Google takes a large share of the global search engine market, there are other search engines like Bing and Baidu that capture their share of international SEO.

Why Google’s New AI-Saturated Search Page Will Be A Disaster

Google didn’t invent full-text search of the Internet – that honor belongs to early pioneers such as WebCrawler, Lycos and AltaVista. But for the last 25 years or so, Google has…

Internal Site Search Optimization: Best Practices for Your Site

A great internal site search can be a delightful user experience—and a wildly profitable optimization. Find out how to do it right.

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IndieSearch

I built a prototype for client-side, fully distributed search for the IndieWeb — check out the demo & a little explainer.

Search has its own bitter lesson

Human incentives to make content findable to your search matter more than technology

Fixing Search

Search on the web, for most people, has become a deplorable experience. It is such a key function that it can feel unfixable, but by treating search as an architectural component of the web (which it effectively is) and working our way through the issues it creates, we can define an alternative that is both realistic and superior.

Personalized PageRank Estimation and Search: A Bidirectional Approach

We present new algorithms for Personalized PageRank estimation and Personalized PageRank search. First, for the problem of estimating Personalized PageRank (PPR) from a source distribution to a...

Personalized PageRank Estimation and Search: A Bidirectional Approach

We present new algorithms for Personalized PageRank estimation and Personalized PageRank search. First, for the problem of estimating Personalized PageRank (PPR) from a source distribution to a...

Peer Knowledge Assisted Search Using Community Search Logs

Search engines have become an increasingly important educational tool. By just typing a few keywords into a search engine text-box, finding information has become an easy exercise. However, some people cannot use search engines effectively for

Meilisearch: Unified Search & AI Retrieval Platform

Build lightning-fast search and AI retrieval with Meilisearch. Open-source, developer-friendly search engine trusted by 20,000+ teams worldwide.

We Analyzed 248K Reddit Posts: What Drives Visibility in AI Search [Study]

We analyzed 248,000 Reddit posts to uncover what makes certain threads appear in AI search results. Learn which post types, engagement levels, and formats drive visibility.