Methodology: How the Journal Carried Out Its Analysis John West Nov. 15, 2019 7:22 am ET
The Wall Street Journal compiled and compared auto-complete and organic search results on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo in three phases, from July 23-Aug. 8; Aug. 26-31; and Sept. 12-19. We created a set of computers in the cloud, using Amazon Web Services EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), which presented new IP addresses, the unique identifier that many webpages use to associate one browser session with another, for each search. The computers were, however, identifiable as working off a server in Virginia, and location could be a factor in our results. We deployed code onto those computers that would mimic a human typing a phrase into a query box, such as “Joe Biden is.” The resulting auto-complete suggestions from each search engine were captured by recording the HTML, the code that represents the content of a webpage. Additionally, we mimicked a human searching for a term, such as “Joe Biden,” and captured the HTML to record the first page of search results on each search engine. On Google, we also collected the news results that appeared in the news module that appeared on the first page of search results. The Journal tested 17 words and phrases that covered a range of political issues and candidates, cultural phrases and names in the news. During each testing cycle, one computer would search one phrase roughly every two hours for the duration of the cycle, with a new IP address for each search, on each search engine. For example, during the 17-day cycle, the phrases were each tested 181 times on each search engine. Some of the terms were repeated in later cycles. ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/methodology-how-the-journal-carried-out-its-analysis-11573820552 _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews_etskywarn.net
