Result Assessment Tool (RAT)

• Identify relevant search queries and use them as the basis for systematic search studies
• Automatically collect search results from multiple search engines such as Google and Bing
• Analyze results automatically, including result overlap, SEO scoring, and readability scoring
• Optionally have search results evaluated by jurors, e.g., for relevance or quality
• Support a wide range of study types, from classification and retrieval effectiveness to stance analysis

What is RAT?

The Result Assessment Tool (RAT) is a free, open-source research toolbox for collecting, analyzing, and evaluating search results. It supports researchers through the full workflow: defining search queries, collecting matching results from various search systems, running automatic analyses, and optionally organizing human evaluations by jurors.

How it works

RAT follows a four-step process:

Example use cases

RAT has been used in studies such as:

• Analyzing stance in Google and Bing results for the 2024 EU Parliament Election
• Investigating Swedish Google search queries on wind power
• Comparing source distribution and result overlap across web search engines
• Your own study — get started with the Knowledge Base

Resources

RAT Knowledge Base
RAT Web Tool (Login)
RAT on LinkedIn