Search (24 results, page 1 of 2)

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Abstract

A study of the "real world" Web information searching behavior of 206 college students over a 10-month period showed that, contrary to expectations, the users adopted a more passive or browsing approach to Web information searching and became more eclectic in their selection of Web hosts as they gained experience. The study used a longitudinal transaction log analysis of the URLs accessed during 5,431 user days of Web information searching to detect changes in information searching behavior associated with increased experience of using the Web. The findings have implications for the design of future Web information retrieval tools

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Abstract

This article analyzes Web searching behavior for homework assignments of high school students through field observations in class and the terminal with students thinking alound, and through interviews with various participants, including the teacher and librarian. Students performed focused searching and progressed through a search swiftly and flexibly. They used landmarks and assumed that one can always start a new search and ask for help. They were satisfied with their searches and the results, but impatient with slow response. The students enjoyed searching the Web because it had a variety of formats, it showed pictures, it covered a multitude of subjects and it provided easy access to information. Difficulties and problems students encountered emphasize the need for training to all involved, and for a system design that is based on user seeking and searching behavior

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Abstract

In this article, we report results of an investigation into the effect of sponsored links on ecommerce information seeking on the Web. In this research, 56 participants each engaged in six ecommerce Web searching tasks. We extracted these tasks from the transaction log of a Web search engine, so they represent actual ecommerce searching information needs. Using 60 organic and 30 sponsored Web links, the quality of the Web search engine results was controlled by switching nonsponsored and sponsored links on half of the tasks for each participant. This allowed for investigating the bias toward sponsored links while controlling for quality of content. The study also investigated the relationship between searching self-efficacy, searching experience, types of ecommerce information needs, and the order of links on the viewing of sponsored links. Data included 2,453 interactions with links from result pages and 961 utterances evaluating these links. The results of the study indicate that there is a strong preference for nonsponsored links, with searchers viewing these results first more than 82% of the time. Searching self-efficacy and experience does not increase the likelihood of viewing sponsored links, and the order of the result listing does not appear to affect searcher evaluation of sponsored links. The implications for sponsored links as a long-term business model are discussed.

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Abstract

In previous articles, we reported the state of Web searching in 1997 (Jansen, Spink, & Saracevic, 2000) and in 1999 (Spink, Wolfram, Jansen, & Saracevic, 2001). Such snapshot studies and statistics on Web use appear regularly (OCLC, 1999), but provide little information about Web searching trends. In this article, we compare and contrast results from our two previous studies of Excite queries' data sets, each containing over 1 million queries submitted by over 200,000 Excite users collected on 16 September 1997 and 20 December 1999. We examine how public Web searching changing during that 2-year time period. As Table 1 shows, the overall structure of Web queries in some areas did not change, while in others we see change from 1997 to 1999. Our comparison shows how Web searching changed incrementally and also dramatically. We see some moves toward greater simplicity, including shorter queries (i.e., fewer terms) and shorter sessions (i.e., fewer queries per user), with little modification (addition or deletion) of terms in subsequent queries. The trend toward shorter queries suggests that Web information content should target specific terms in order to reach Web users. Another trend was to view fewer pages of results per query. Most Excite users examined only one page of results per query, since an Excite results page contains ten ranked Web sites. Were users satisfied with the results and did not need to view more pages? It appears that the public continues to have a low tolerance of wading through retrieved sites. This decline in interactivity levels is a disturbing finding for the future of Web searching. Queries that included Boolean operators were in the minority, but the percentage increased between the two time periods. Most Boolean use involved the AND operator with many mistakes. The use of relevance feedback almost doubled from 1997 to 1999, but overall use was still small. An unusually large number of terms were used with low frequency, such as personal names, spelling errors, non-English words, and Web-specific terms, such as URLs. Web query vocabulary contains more words than found in large English texts in general. The public language of Web queries has its own and unique characteristics. How did Web searching topics change from 1997 to 1999? We classified a random sample of 2,414 queries from 1997 and 2,539 queries from 1999 into 11 categories (Table 2). From 1997 to 1999, Web searching shifted from entertainment, recreation and sex, and pornography, preferences to e-commerce-related topics under commerce, travel, employment, and economy. This shift coincided with changes in information distribution on the publicly indexed Web.

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Abstract

Purpose - This paper aims to report findings from an exploratory study investigating the web interactions and technoliteracy of children in the early childhood years. Previous research has studied aspects of older children's technoliteracy and web searching; however, few studies have analyzed web search data from children younger than six years of age. Design/methodology/approach - The study explored the Google web searching and technoliteracy of young children who are enrolled in a "preparatory classroom" or kindergarten (the year before young children begin compulsory schooling in Queensland, Australia). Young children were video- and audio-taped while conducting Google web searches in the classroom. The data were qualitatively analysed to understand the young children's web search behaviour. Findings - The findings show that young children engage in complex web searches, including keyword searching and browsing, query formulation and reformulation, relevance judgments, successive searches, information multitasking and collaborative behaviours. The study results provide significant initial insights into young children's web searching and technoliteracy. Practical implications - The use of web search engines by young children is an important research area with implications for educators and web technologies developers. Originality/value - This is the first study of young children's interaction with a web search engine.

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Abstract

Searching for information on the WWW basically comes down to locating an appropriate Web site and to retrieving relevant information from that site. This study examined the effect of a user's WWW experience on both phases of the search process. 35 students from 2 schools for Dutch pre-university education were observed while performing 3 search tasks. The results indicate that subjects with WWW-experience are more proficient in locating Web sites than are novice WWW-users. The observed differences were ascribed to the experts' superior skills in operating Web search engines. However, on tasks that required subjects to locate information on specific Web sites, the performance of experienced and novice users was equivalent - a result that is in line with hypertext research. Based on these findings, implications for training and supporting students in searching for information on the WWW are identified. Finally, the role of the subjects' level of domain expertise is discussed and directions for future research are proposed

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Abstract

This study examines the influence of time constraints on Internet and Web search goals and search behavior. Specifically, it looks at the searching behavior of public library Internet users who, previously limited to 30 minutes per Internet session, are given an unlimited amount of time for use. Interviews and observations were conducted with 34 participants searching on their own queries. Despite an increase in the time allowed for searching, most people spent less than 30 minutes on the Internet, carrying out tasks like paying bills, shopping, browsing, and making reservations. Those who took more than 30 minutes were looking for jobs or browsing. E-mail use was universal. In this context, influences like time-dependent and time-independent tasks, use of search hubs to perform more efficient searches, and search diversity were recorded. Though there are a number of large and small studies of Internet and Web use, few of them focus on temporal influences. This study extends knowledge in this area of inquiry.

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Abstract

Examines the effects of task structure on elementary school students' information seeking on the Internet. 32 5th and 6th grade students searched on 2 tasks for information that was relevant to solving 2 problems. Information seeking process behaviours were analyzed by collecting computer trace data of each student's search. Information seeking performance was measured by 2 adult raters and by students' own judgements of all documents found. Analyses of students' process behaviours illustrated that children are interactive information seekers, preferring to browse rather than plan or employ systematic analytic-based searching strategies. Performance results indicated that children have difficulty finding relevant information on the Internet, however, children did search more effectively on the ill-defined task than on the well-defined one. When judging their own performance, students rated their work equally on both tasks, yet adult judges found that studented permormed significantly worse on the well-defined task

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Abstract

This paper reports the results of an empirical study into gender differences in collaborative Web searching, conducted in a grade-six classroom of a Canadian elementary school. Searches undertaken by 16 same-sex groups of two or three students (six of boys, ten of girls) for information to support a class assignment were captured on videotape. The multiple search sessions took place over several weeks. An analysis of the search sessions reveals that the groups of boys formulated queries comprising fewer keywords than the groups of girls, the boys spent less time on individual pages than the girls, the boys clicked more hypertext links per minute than the girls, and in general were more active while online. The study overall demonstrates academic, affective and behavior differences between grade-six boys and girls working in same-sex groups on a Web-based class project.

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Abstract

Describes how librarians at Bowling Green State University, USA, used the McKinley Search Voyeur World wide Web site to observe a sample of searches currently entered by users of the McKinley Magellan search engine, in order to try to establish how library patrons search for information. Discusses search errors revealed by this research and provides a list of tips for successful WWW searching

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Abstract

Previous models of searching behavior have taken as their foundation the Markov model of random processes. In this model, the next action that a user takes is determined by a probabilistic rule which is conditioned by the most recent experiences of the user. This model, which has achieved very limited success in describing real data, is at odds with the evidence of introspection in a crucial way. Introspection reveals that when we search we are, more or less, in a state of expectancy, which can be satisfied in a number of ways. In addition, the state can be modified by the accumulated evidence of our searches. The Markov model approach can not readily accommodate such persistence of intention and behavior. The Petri Net model, which has been developed to analyze the interdependencies among events in a communications network, can be adapted to this situation. In this adaptation, the so-called "transitions" of the Petri Net occur only when their necessary pre-conditions have been met. We are able to show that various key abstractions of information finding, such as "document relevance", "a desired number of relevant documents", "discouragement", "exhaustion" and "satisfaction" can all be modeled using the Petri Net framework. Further, we show that this model leads naturally to a new approach to the collection of user data, and to the analysis of transaction logs, by providing a far richer description of the user's present state, without inducing a combinatorial explosion

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Abstract

Subject content analysis of Web query terms is essential to understand Web searching interests. Such analysis includes exploring search topics and observing changes in their frequency distributions with time. To provide a basis for in-depth analysis of users' search interests on a larger scale, this article presents a query categorization approach to automatically classifying Web query terms into broad subject categories. Because a query is short in length and simple in structure, its intended subject(s) of search is difficult to judge. Our approach, therefore, combines the search processes of real-world search engines to obtain highly ranked Web documents based on each unknown query term. These documents are used to extract cooccurring terms and to create a feature set. An effective ranking function has also been developed to find the most appropriate categories. Three search engine logs in Taiwan were collected and tested. They contained over 5 million queries from different periods of time. The achieved performance is quite encouraging compared with that of human categorization. The experimental results demonstrate that the approach is efficient in dealing with large numbers of queries and adaptable to the dynamic Web environment. Through good integration of human and machine efforts, the frequency distributions of subject categories in response to changes in users' search interests can be systematically observed in real time. The approach has also shown potential for use in various information retrieval applications, and provides a basis for further Web searching studies.

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Abstract

Reports results of a survey, conducted by the State University of New York and Albany Library, to investigate the effects of gender, college status and prior Internet experience on the use of Internet resources. The subjects were 96 randomly selected users using the library's Internet terminals during the first 2 months of 1995. The majority of users were found to share the following characteristics: male undergraduates affiliated with the social sciences; and novice users who have less than 6 months experience. Respondents felt strongly that the Internet is useful, and has been an important resource for their research and assignment. Users have high expectations of searching capabilities, while they feel neutral or disappointed with browsing. Results indicate that libraries should provide access to the Internet and suggest that libraries should take the lead in developing searchable indexes and making databases better organized for the ease and effectiveness of browsing

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Abstract

We report a naturalistic interactive information retrieval (IIR) study of 18 ordinary users in the age of 20-25 who carry out everyday-life information seeking (ELIS) on the Internet with respect to the three types of information needs identified by Ingwersen (1986): the verificative information need (VIN), the conscious topical information need (CIN), and the muddled topical information need (MIN). The searches took place in the private homes of the users in order to ensure as realistic searching as possible. Ingwersen (1996) associates a given search behaviour to each of the three types of information needs, which are analytically deduced, but not yet empirically tested. Thus the objective of the study is to investigate whether empirical data does, or does not, conform to the predictions derived from the three types of information needs. The main conclusion is that the analytically deduced information search behaviour characteristics by Ingwersen are positively corroborated for this group of test participants who search the Internet as part of ELIS.

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Abstract

Users move from one state (or task) to another in an information system's labyrinth as they try to accomplish their work, and the amount of time they spend in each state varies. This article uses continuous-time stochastic models, mainly based on semi-Markov chains, to derive user state transition patterns (both in rates and in probabilities) in a Web-based information system. The methodology was demonstrated with 126,925 search sessions drawn from the transaction logs of the University of California's MELVYL® library catalog system (www.melvyLucop.edu). First, user sessions were categorized into six groups based on their similar use of the system. Second, by using a three-layer hierarchical taxonomy of the system Web pages, user sessions in each usage group were transformed into a sequence of states. All the usage groups but one have third-order sequential dependency in state transitions. The sole exception has fourth-order sequential dependency. The transition rates as well as transition probabilities of the semi-Markov model provide a background for interpreting user behavior probabilistically, at various levels of detail. Finally, the differences in derived usage patterns between usage groups were tested statistically. The test results showed that different groups have distinct patterns of system use. Knowledge of the extent of sequential dependency is beneficial because it allows one to predict a user's next move in a search space based on the past moves that have been made. It can also be used to help customize the design of the user interface to the system to facilitate interaction. The group CL6 labeled "knowledgeable and sophisticated usage" and the group CL7 labeled "unsophisticated usage" both had third-order sequential dependency and had the same most-frequently occurring search pattern: screen display, record display, screen display, and record display. The group CL8 called "highly interactive use with good search results" had fourth-order sequential dependency, and its most frequently occurring pattern was the same as CL6 and CL7 with one more screen display action added. The group CL13, called "known-item searching" had third-order sequential dependency, and its most frequently occurring pattern was index access, search with retrievals, screen display, and record display. Group CL14 called "help intensive searching," and CL18 called "relatively unsuccessful" both had thirdorder sequential dependency, and for both groups the most frequently occurring pattern was index access, search without retrievals, index access, and again, search without retrievals.

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Abstract

This article reports on a model and patterns of use of a library catalog that can be accessed through the Internet. Three categories of users are identified. individuals who perform a search of the catalog, tourists who look only at opening pages of the library catalog's site, and Web spiders that come to the site to obtain pages for indexing the Web. A number of types of use activities are also identified, and can be grouped with the presearch phase (which takes place before any searching begins): the search phase, the display phase (in which users display the results of their search), and phases in which users make errors, ask the system for help or assistance, and take other actions. An empirical investigation of patterns of use of a university Web-based library catalog was conducted for 479 days. During that period, the characteristics of about 2.5 million sessions were recorded and analyzed, and usage trends were identified. Of the total, 62% of the sessions were for users who performed a search, 27% were from spiders, and 11% were for tourists. During the study period, the average search session lasted about 5 minutes when the study began and had increased to about 10 minutes 16 months later. An average search consisted of about 1.5 presearch actions lasting about 25 seconds, about 5.3 display actions, and 2.5 searches per session. The latter two categories are in the range of 35-37 seconds per session each. There were major differences in usage (number of searches, search time, number of display actions, and display time), depending upon the database accessed

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Abstract

In this paper, we report on the second part of an empirical study designed to observe how users interact with World Wide Web resources. Applying a holistic approach, the researches examine users' cognitive, affective, and physical behaviors during user-Web interaction in order to understand better the nature of information retrieval on the Web, the needs of Web users, and the problem-solving strategies Web users employ. From analyses and the participant verbalizations collected during monitored searches, the researchers developed a taxonomy of problem solving strategies. The coding scheme was developed based on a content analysis of the integrated process data. Information from triangulation follow-up with participants via anonymously completed questionnaires, the taxonomy, and analyses of search transcripts were collected to determine 1) what problems users encountered during the interaction and how users solved these problems; and 2) which problem-solving strategies Web users considered and selected for finding factual information. The focus of the coding was on the participants' cognitive, affective, and physical behaviors in response to the components of the problems encountered, which included problems of the following types: Web interfaces, users' mental models, and the Web information sources. Searching behavior and problem-solving patterns are described and interpreted within the relevant situational context and the problems users encountered are identified and analyzed. Both the problems users faced and their problem-solving approaches endeavored evidence a strong reliance on mental models of the features available on sites, the location of those features, and other interface design concepts