The Result Assessment Tool (RAT) is a modular and flexible research software that allows the design and conduct of studies using search engine data. With RAT, researchers can easily define a list of queries. The tool then automatically queries selected search engines, collects the results, and presents them in a structured format for further processing. RAT efficiently collects result URLs, full text, and screenshots.
In research studies, researchers run automatic analysis and classification or let jurors evaluate results on whatever criteria they are interested in.
RAT is free to use through a web interface. It is fully open source, so researchers can run their installations or modify the software to fit their needs. The RAT project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG –Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) from 8/2021 until 10/2024, project number 460676551.
