Coverage of Africa-specific Subject Areas and Sources by Some Major Internet Search Engines

Abstract

The study compared the relative coverage of Africa- and Nigeriaspecific sources of information on selected subjects by major Internet search engines. Ask, Google and Yahoo! were tested using Boolean queries comprising each of 20 highly Africa-pertinent subject key words and each offour regional terms Africa, Europe, Africa NOT South, and Nigeria. The quantities of hits by the engines for the same or different queries were then compared. The study found that Yahoo! tended to retrieve more hits on most of the subject areas than either Google or Ask; that the search engines differed often markedly in their ability to retrieve information on the different subject areas; and that South (or southern) Africa-specific information did not overly dominate the Africa-specific information retrieved by the engines. The findings show that more studies are required to test both the quantity and quality of sources retrievable through a greater diversity of search engines, and using more complex search queries containing narrower subjects and the names of individual African countries, regions, peoples and other entities.
The study is expected to stimulate research on the use of specific Internet technologies, such as search engines, for Africa-specific Durposes, such as the retrieval of Africa-specific information.