Webpage ranking : how it affects your selections

• Main Author: Zhang, Boyu
• Other Authors: Xiao Gaoxi
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Computer hardware, software and systems
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45813
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

What do you need to search for your desired answer? Recalling the period before 1997, the most possible would be “go the libraries”. And now, the most possible answer is a computer with internet connected to find it out on the search engines. Web site like Google, Bing and Yahoo etc. are all commonly used search engine. These search engines will provide long lists of website for each query. How would the user decide the result they really desire? According to the research results from Chitika, a worldwide search-targeted network, the highest Google result impressions percentage is the result listed in the first position at 34.5%. As shown in the result, webpage ranking greatly affect the choices made by the users. In this project, the author will use an implicit search result data collection website which will collect the implicit information during the interviewee making choices after search queries from google.com. The collected data will give a better understanding of how webpage ranking affect the choices under different scenario. The project was built using Apache Web Server, MySQL Database, PHP and HTML to create an intranet based implicit search result data collection website. SQLyogEnt was involved for a better management of the data collected.