A Bibliometric Study of Search Engine Literature in the SSCI Database

This paper investigates the publishing trends of search engine literature as catalogued in the social sciences citation index (SSCI) database in the period 1995-2009. Our findings indicate that (1) the quantity of recent research on search engine study is expanding remarkably; (2) the frequency indices of author productivity appear to abide by Lotka’s Law; (3) most research papers on search engine study are generated by multiple authors; and (4) applications of search engine study are most frequent in research areas such as information science, information systems of computer science, and interdisciplinary applications of computer science. Finally, future directions of research on search engine study are considered. According to Bradford’s Law, the three zone ratio comparisons are almost equal at 1:7:7, indicating that the data appear to match Bradford’s Law. Six core journals in the search engine study are identified and analyzed.