## 1 Introduction
For this reason, some argue that the news service of the search engine should be converted to an external links method [23]. In Korea, as large-scale political comment manipulation was revealed in the news content of internal links in 2018, many news media are arguing that the news service of search engines should be changed to external links. However, according to [PERSON] s and [PERSON] [22], the external link method cannot solve all the problems because it has a disadvantage in that excessive advertisements and stimulating news increase to improve profitability. Google, which has been using the external link method for a long time, is also not free from conflicts over the distribution of advertising revenue with news media in each country [24]. Search engines effectively provide important information, and news media companies are wary of the search engines becoming a new power group, so in the current situation, conflict between search engines and companies is inevitable [25]. Therefore, this study focused on the conflict between search engines and news media companies, which have been in the deepest dispute for a long time within the confrontation structures between traditional companies and new technology companies. News media companies claim autonomy and adequate compensation for the use of news content, arguing that search engines dominate the web traffic and advertising market without any effort on content creation [26]. However, existing studies have focused on how gatekeepers develop specific issues into social agendas [27] or the process of dissemination and transfer of news content according to the interaction between search engines and consumers [28], which were often analyzed for search engines as news gatekeepers. [PERSON] [29] noted the opacity of search engines and pointed out that the public has no choice but to believe that search engines will not operate as falsified gatekeepers because they do not know exactly how they work. There has also been academic attention on the ethical issues of search engines, which have a dominant position in the media industry [30; 31], includingdiscussions of the privacy issues related to search engine policies and practices [29; 32]. Research on ethical issues and privacy in the field of search engines has been limited to seeking better access to personal information [33]. In addition, there have been studies on the empirical impact of online agendas [34] and studies to evaluate the value of broadcasting contents by focusing on the problem of profit distribution among media companies [35]. Studies on the usefulness and value evaluation of search engines were not linked to media companies and did not extend to hyperlink methods [36]. There has been no empirical study on how the performance efficiency of a news media company varies depending on the hyperlink method selected by a search engine. The method of hyperlinks used by search engines is becoming an increasingly important and controversial topic because exposure to the top pages of search results means more opportunities for content to be distributed [37]. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of the external link method and the internal link method on the technical efficiency of news media companies. For this purpose, we looked at the case of the search engine Naver, which uses both external and internal link methods. Naver was selected because it has the highest market share in a specific region and distributes news from various media companies using both external and internal link methods. There are 123 news media companies providing news content to Naver, of which 63 companies use external links and 60 companies deliver news content to consumers using internal links. Therefore, in this study, the technical efficiency of the two groups is compared using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), and the meta-technology ratio of the two groups is compared using meta-frontier analysis (MFA) to examine the efficiency of news media companies according to the hyperlink method.