{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,13]],"date-time":"2026-02-13T17:27:24Z","timestamp":1771003644251,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":17,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2006,8,1]],"date-time":"2006-08-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1154390400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2006,8,1]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Purpose<\/jats:title><jats:p>This paper reports the findings of a major study examining the overlap among results retrieved by three major web search engines. The goal of the research was to: measure the overlap across three major web search engines on the first results page overlap (i.e. share the same results) and the differences across a wide range of user defined search terms; determine the differences in the first page of search results and their rankings (each web search engine's view of the most relevant content) across single\u2010source web search engines, including both sponsored and non\u2010sponsored results; and measure the degree to which a meta\u2010search web engine, such as Dogpile.com, provides searchers with the most highly ranked search results from three major single source web search engines.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>The authors collected 10,316 random Dogpile.com queries and ran an overlap algorithm using the URL for each result by query. The overlap of first result page search for each query was then summarized across all 10,316 to determine the overall overlap metrics. For a given query, the URL of each result for each engine was retrieved from the database.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>The percent of total results unique retrieved by only one of the three major web search engines was 85 percent, retrieved by two web search engines was 12 percent, and retrieved by all three web search engines was 3 percent. This small level of overlap reflects major differences in web search engines retrieval and ranking results.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>This study provides an important contribution to the web research literature. The findings point to the value of meta\u2010search engines in web retrieval to overcome the biases of single search engines.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Practical implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>The results of this research can inform people and organizations that seek to use the web as part of their information seeking efforts, and the design of web search engines.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>This research is a large investigation into web search engine overlap using real data from a major web meta\u2010search engine and single web search engines that sheds light on the uniqueness of top results retrieved by web search engines.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/10662240610690034","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2006,9,26]],"date-time":"2006-09-26T06:07:42Z","timestamp":1159250862000},"page":"419-426","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":13,"title":["Overlap among major web search engines"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Amanda","family":"Spink","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Bernard J.","family":"Jansen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Vinish","family":"Kathuria","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Sherry","family":"Koshman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"key":"key2022031720342990900_b1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bar\u2010Ilan, J. (2005), \u201cComparing rankings of search results on the web\u201d, Information Processing & Management, Vol. 41, pp. 1511\u20109.","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ipm.2005.03.008"},{"key":"key2022031720342990900_b2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bharat, K. and Broder, A. (1998), \u201cA technique for measuring the relative size and overlap of public web search engines\u201d, Computer Networks and ISDN Systems., Vol. 30 Nos 1\u20107, pp. 379\u201088.","DOI":"10.1016\/S0169-7552(98)00127-5"},{"key":"key2022031720342990900_b3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bar\u2010Yossef, Z.B. and Gurevich, M.G. (2006), \u201cRandom sampling from a search engine's index\u201d, Proceedings of the 2006 World Wide Web Conference. 22\u201026 May 2006. Edinburgh, Scotland.","DOI":"10.1145\/1135777.1135833"},{"key":"key2022031720342990900_b4","unstructured":"Blakely, C., Spink, A. and Jansen, J. 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