Meanwhile those trying to find out about how federal Liberal MP Kevin Andrews had lost his preselection would have found only 34% of news websites in response to a search on Google, compared with 70% on Bing and 48% on Ecosia.
Researchers from the Monash University Climate Change Communication Hub took the top 10 search terms used by Australians on Google on two days last week, and compared results delivered by Google, Microsoft Bing and Ecosia.
They found that Bing and Ecosia delivered substantially more professionally produced news in the top 50 results compared with Google.
The director of the Climate Change Communication Research Hub, Associate Professor David Holmes, said the results demonstrated the importance of news media to search engines, with the top search terms clearly reflecting that people were trying to learn more about current affairs topics.