Proposing a New Combined Indicator for Measuring Search Engine Performance and Evaluating Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Bing Search Engines based on Combined Indicator

Abstract

This study has developed a combined indicator to evaluate the performance of different search engines. Documentary analysis, survey, and evaluative methods are employed in the present study. The research was conducted in two stages. First, a combined indicator was designed to measure search engines. To this end, 72 criteria for measuring the performance of search engines were identified, out of which 22 criteria were selected. Accordingly, 10 criteria were selected in six general classes through a survey of subject matter experts. Validation of our proposed combined indicator was obtained by Delphi method and using the opinions of experts in the fields of information science and information system. Second, web search engines were evaluated based on the proposed combined indicator. The statistical population of this part of the research consisted of two categories: (1) general web search engines, and (2) general subjects. The sample size of the first category contained four search engines Yahoo, Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing, and the second category involved 40 search terms under 10 general categories. The results showed that the combined indicator had six general criteria: (1) relevance, (2) ranking, (3) novelty ratio, (4) coverage ratio, (5) ratio of unrelated documents, and (6) proportion of duplication hits. According to this indicator, Google is at the top, followed by Bing. This study proposes a new indicator for evaluating search engine performance, which can measure the efficiency of search engines. Therefore, its use to measure the performance of search engines is recommended to researchers and search engine developers.