Topic searched: What was the first charter school?
| Search Engine | First Result | Second Result | Third Result | Fourth Result | Fifth Result |
| Business Insider | Wikipedia | Wikipedia | Education Resources Information Center | NPR | |
| Yahoo | Wikipedia | Business Insider | National Conference of State Legislatures | Wikipedia | Illinois Network of Charter Schools |
| Bing | Wikipedia | Business Insider | National Conference of State Legislatures | Wikipedia | Illinois Network of Charter Schools |
| MetaCrawler | Wikipedia | Business Insider | National Conference of State Legislatures | The New York Times | Illinois Network of Charter Schools |
| Dogpile | Wikipedia | Business Insider | National Conference of State Legislatures | PBS | Illinois Network of Charter Schools |
| IxQuick | Business Insider | Wikipedia | NPR | Education Resources Information Center | PBS |
I was surprised that the same few sites were the Top 5 results for six different search engines. I was especially surprised that Yahoo and Bing returned the results in the exact same order. I noticed the meta-search engines had a significantly higher number of advertisements than Google, Yahoo and Bing. It took more energy to comb through what was an advertisement and what was an actual result. I was also surprised that the meta-search engines still returned Wikipedia results. So often we are taught that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, yet it appeared in the top five results of every single search engine on this topic.
Hey. Your search results have a lot of similarities. For the last two result’s I see they start to vary. I’m surprised that “The New York Times” is listed as a fourth result, it a very reliable source.
First off, I love your layout! I agree with you about the adds as well. Using the meta-search engines, there were twice as many ads than with the regular search engines.
Great Topic, I believe charter schools are the best for public education. I was told that my daughter is attending the first charter school established in GA. Addison Elementary so I will check out Wiki to see if that is true.
That is a good point about the validity of Wikipedia as a source even though it is so common results on search engines