Google's search engine not as good as its competitors for news, research finds
www.theguardian.com
Monash University research finds Bing and Ecosia delivered substantially more professionally produced news in the top 50 results compared with Google

The director of the Climate Change Communication Research Hub, Associate Professor David Holmes, said the results demonstrated the importance of news media to search engines, with the top search terms clearly reflecting that people were trying to learn more about current affairs topics. “It is in the interests of search engines to show news sites because that brings users who are in search of trusted and useful quality content,” he said. “These results suggest that Google’s competitors are well able to deliver that kind of professional content.”

Don’t be fearful of change, sometimes you end up even better off. So experiment a little.

See https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/03/googles-search-engine-not-as-good-as-its-competitors-for-news-research-finds

#technology #search #news

  • GadgeteerZAOP
    0•3 years ago

    Yes real pity that it was not actually published as I also find no reference to the study, just the quotes given by the professor.

    Google stood out amongst all others but what I suspecting is that other search engines are getting better. Ecosia may have an edge too on this topic as that is something they support.

    But I think it also shows that we got so used to using Google we assume everything will stop working without it. The shiny new parts of Google seem a bit tarnished nowadays and I suspect they are not innovating as much. What with union issues now etc, Google is not the Google it once was when it started up ;-)

    • ufra
      0•3 years ago

      Ecosia may have an edge too on this topic as that is something they support.

      What does this mean? Does ecosia have their own algorithms above and beyond fetching results from other engines like Bing?

      They are not a good privacy search engine in any event:

      For example, when you do a search on Ecosia we forward the following information to our partner, Bing: IP address (obfuscated), user agent string, search term, and some settings like your country and language setting.

      Additionally, by default Ecosia sets a Bing-specific “Client ID” parameter to improve the quality of your search results. If your browser has “Do Not Track” enabled, we disable the “Client ID” automatically. You can also choose to disable this feature by modifying your user settings.

      Bing automatically anonymizes your Ecosia search history and unique identifier after 4 days.

      https://info.ecosia.org/privacy