Mozilla study: search engine usage and result quality

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I just found this on Mozilla’s Rally page: Search Engine Usage and Result Quality

I’m interested in results of the study, esp. in how engines with many infoboxes (Google, Bing, You.com, DDG) compare with engines with fewer infoboxes (Qwant, Mojeek, Ecosia) when it comes to result clicks and perceived engine quality.

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Thanks for posting, I had not seen this. The search engines covered are:

Ask.com
Baidu
Bing
Brave
DuckDuckGo
Ecosia
Google
Yahoo!

I note the PI is Jonathan Mayer, who is highly networked with the govt and Big Tech global policy leads. I saw speak on a panel at a CMA event where he was as good as promoting Apple.

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Honestly when I think about it, I’d be interested in comparing multiple engines with the same organic results simply because they have only one differentiating factor: infoboxes.

Comparing DDG, Bing, Ecosia, and Yahoo (all of which source organic link results from Bing) would be really interesting because it’d tell us if engines that invest heavily in original infoboxes (DDG, Bing, Yahoo) are really that much more useful than engines that don’t (Ecosia).

Of course, the sort of user who’d pick Ecosia over DDG is probably not the type who’s too attached to infoboxes and has different search habits in the first place…

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I doubt the vast majority of DDG and Ecosia users are even aware or think about it. It’s more like a simple mind association most of them picked up word-of-mouth: DDG = keeps me private; Ecosia = plant trees.

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