How Important Are User-Generated Data for Search Result Quality?

Tobias J. Klein, Madina Kurmangaliyeva, Jens Prüfer and Patricia Prüfer

Journal of Law and Economics, 2025, vol. 68, issue 3, 499 - 518

Abstract: Do search engines produce better results because their algorithms are better or because they can access more data from past searches? We document that the algorithm of a small search engine can produce nonpersonalized results that are of similar quality to those of the dominant firm (Google) for certain types of search queries. Overall differences in the quality of search results are explained by searches for rare queries, which constitute 74 percent of the traffic in our data. We conduct an experiment in which we keep the algorithm of a small search engine fixed and only vary the amount of data it uses as input. Our results show that giving small search engines access to more data about rare queries improves the quality of their results. This suggests that mandatory data sharing by large search engines is a necessary condition, yet probably not a sufficient one, to increase competition in the search market.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/734801 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/734801 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/734801

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().