Search (99 results, page 2 of 5)

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Abstract

The study investigated how users' emotion control and search tasks interact and influence the Web search behavior and performance among experienced Web users. Sixty-seven undergraduate students with substantial Web experience participated in the study. Effects of emotion control and tasks were found significant on the search behavior but not on the search performance. The interaction effect between emotion control and tasks on the search behavior was also significant: effects of users' emotion control on the search behavior varied depending on search tasks. Profile analyses of search behaviors identified and contrasted the most commonly occurring profiles of search activities in different search tasks. Suggestions were made to improve information literacy programs, and implications for future research were discussed.

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Abstract

Transaction logs from four different Web-based information retrieval environments (bibliographic databank, OPAC, search engine, specialized search system) were analyzed for empirical regularities in search characteristics to determine whether users engage in different behaviors in different Web-based search environments. Descriptive statistics and relative frequency distributions related to term usage, query formulation, and session duration were tabulated. The analysis revealed that there are differences in these characteristics. Users were more likely to engage in extensive searching using the OPAC and specialized search system. Surprisingly, the bibliographic databank search environment resulted in the most parsimonious searching, more similar to a general search engine. Although on the surface Web-based search facilities may appear similar, users do engage in different search behaviors.

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Abstract

In this paper, we define and present a comprehensive classification of user intent for Web searching. The classification consists of three hierarchical levels of informational, navigational, and transactional intent. After deriving attributes of each, we then developed a software application that automatically classified queries using a Web search engine log of over a million and a half queries submitted by several hundred thousand users. Our findings show that more than 80% of Web queries are informational in nature, with about 10% each being navigational and transactional. In order to validate the accuracy of our algorithm, we manually coded 400 queries and compared the results from this manual classification to the results determined by the automated method. This comparison showed that the automatic classification has an accuracy of 74%. Of the remaining 25% of the queries, the user intent is vague or multi-faceted, pointing to the need for probabilistic classification. We discuss how search engines can use knowledge of user intent to provide more targeted and relevant results in Web searching.

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Abstract

This article explores the effects of undergraduate students' mental models of the Web on their online searching behavior. Forty-four undergraduate students, mainly freshmen and sophomores, participated in the study. Subjects' mental models of the Web were treated as equally good styles and operationalized as drawings of their perceptions about the Web. Four types of mental models of the Web were identified based on the drawings and the associated descriptions: technical view, functional view, process view, and connection view. In the study, subjects were required to finish two search tasks. Searching behavior was measured from four aspects: navigation and performance, subjects' feelings about tasks and their own performances, query construction, and search patterns. The four mental model groups showed different navigation and querying behaviors, but the differences were not significant. Subjects' satisfaction with their own performances was found to be significantly correlated with the time to complete the task. The results also showed that the familiarity of the task to subjects had a major effect on their ways to start interaction, query construction, and search patterns.

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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

Web queries in question format are becoming a common element of a user's interaction with Web search engines. Web search services such as Ask Jeeves - a publicly accessible question and answer (Q&A) search engine - request users to enter question format queries. This paper provides results from a study examining queries in question format submitted to two different Web search engines - Ask Jeeves that explicitly encourages queries in question format and the Excite search service that does not explicitly encourage queries in question format. We identify the characteristics of queries in question format in two different data sets: (1) 30,000 Ask Jeeves queries and 15,575 Excite queries, including the nature, length, and structure of queries in question format. Findings include: (1) 50% of Ask Jeeves queries and less than 1% of Excite were in question format, (2) most users entered only one query in question format with little query reformulation, (3) limited range of formats for queries in question format - mainly "where", "what", or "how" questions, (4) most common question query format was "Where can I find ..." for general information on a topic, and (5) non-question queries may be in request format. Overall, four types of user Web queries were identified: keyword, Boolean, question, and request. These findings provide an initial mapping of the structure and content of queries in question and request format. Implications for Web search services are discussed.

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Abstract

Purpose - This paper aims to report a number of factors that are perceived by web users as influential elements in their search procedure. The paper introduces a new conceptual measure called "web search efficacy" (hereafter WSE) to evaluate the performance of searches mainly based on users' perceptions. Design/methodology/approach - A rich dataset of a wider study was inductively re-explored to identify different categories that are perceived influential by web users on the final outcome of their searches. A selective review of the literature was carried out to discover to what extent previous research supports the findings of the current study. Findings - The analysis of the dataset led to the identification of five categories of influential factors. Within each group different factors have been recognized. Accordingly, the concept of WSE has been introduced. The five "Ss" which determine WSE are searcher's performance, search tool's performance, search strategy, search topic, and search situation. Research limitations/implications - The research body is scattered in different areas and it is difficult to carry out a comprehensive review. The WSE table, which is derived from the empirical data and was supported by previous research, can be employed for further research in various groups of web users. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the area of information seeking on the web by providing researchers with a new conceptual framework to evaluate the efficiency of each search session and identify the underlying factors on the final outcome of web searching.

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Abstract

The rapid development of Web sites providing extensive coverage of a topic, coupled with the development of powerful search engines (designed to help users find such Web sites), suggests that users can easily find comprehensive information about a topic. In domains such as consumer healthcare, finding comprehensive information about a topic is critical as it can improve a patient's judgment in making healthcare decisions, and can encourage higher compliance with treatment. However, recent studies show that despite using powerful search engines, many healthcare information seekers have difficulty finding comprehensive information even for narrow healthcare topics because the relevant information is scattered across many Web sites. To date, no studies have analyzed how facts related to a search topic are distributed across relevant Web pages and Web sites. In this study, the distribution of facts related to five common healthcare topics across high-quality sites is analyzed, and the reasons underlying those distributions are explored. The analysis revealed the existence of few pages that had many facts, many pages that had few facts, and no single page or site that provided all the facts. While such a distribution conforms to other information-related phenomena, a deeper analysis revealed that the distributions were caused by a trade-off between depth and breadth, leading to the existence of general, specialized, and sparse pages. Furthermore, the results helped to make explicit the knowledge needed by searchers to find comprehensive healthcare information, and suggested the motivation to explore distribution-conscious approaches for the development of future search systems, search interfaces, Web page designs, and training.

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Abstract

Thirty-one patrons, who were selected by Slone to provide a range of age and experience, agreed when approached while using the catalog of the Wake County library system to try searching via the Internet. Fifteen searched the Wake County online catalog in this manner and 16 searched the World Wide Web, including that catalog. They were subjected to brief pre-structured taped interviews before and after their searches and observed during the searching process resulting in a log of behaviors, comments, pages accessed, and time spent. Data were analyzed across participants and categories. Web searches were characterized as linking, URL, search engine, within a site domain, and searching a web catalog; and participants by the number of these techniques used. Four used only one, 13 used two, 11 used three, two used four, and one all five. Participant experience was characterized as never used, used search engines, browsing experience, email experience, URL experience, catalog experience, and finally chat room/newsgroup experience. Sixteen percent of the participants had never used the Internet, 71% had used search engines, 65% had browsed, 58% had used email, 39% had used URLs, 39% had used online catalogs, and 32% had used chat rooms. The catalog was normally consulted before the web, where both were used, and experience with an online catalog assists in web use. Scrolling was found to be unpopular and practiced halfheartedly.

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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

Web searchers commonly have difficulties crafting queries to fulfill their information needs; even after they are able to craft a query, they often find it challenging to evaluate the results of their Web searches. Sources of these problems include the lack of support for constructing and refining queries, and the static nature of the list-based representations of Web search results. WordBars has been developed to assist users in their Web search and exploration tasks. This system provides a visual representation of the frequencies of the terms found in the first 100 document surrogates returned from an initial query, in the form of a histogram. Exploration of the search results is supported through term selection in the histogram, resulting in a re-sorting of the search results based on the use of the selected terms in the document surrogates. Terms from the histogram can be easily added or removed from the query, generating a new set of search results. Examples illustrate how WordBars can provide valuable support for query refinement and search results exploration, both when vague and specific initial queries are provided. User evaluations with both expert and intermediate Web searchers illustrate the benefits of the interactive exploration features of WordBars in terms of effectiveness as well as subjective measures. Although differences were found in the demographics of these two user groups, both were able to benefit from the features of WordBars.

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Abstract

This project analyzed 541,920 user queries submitted to and executed in an academic Website during a four-year period (May 1997 to May 2001) using a relational database. The purpose of the study is three-fold: (1) to understand Web users' query behavior; (2) to identify problems encountered by these Web users; (3) to develop appropriate techniques for optimization of query analysis and mining. The linguistic analyses focus an query structures, lexicon, and word associations using statistical measures such as Zipf distribution and mutual information. A data model with finest granularity is used for data storage and iterative analyses. Patterns and trends of querying behavior are identified and compared with previous studies.

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Abstract

Presents a brief guide to using Boolean operators and search engines to find information on the Web

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Abstract

Tips zur Suche, u.a. zur Produktsuche im Web

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Abstract

In this article the authors look at the prescriptions advocated by Web search textbooks in the light of a selection of empirical data of real Web information search processes. They use the strategy of disjointed incrementalism, which is a theoretical foundation from decision making, to focus an how people face complex problems, and claim that such problem solving can be compared to the tasks searchers perform when interacting with the Web. The findings suggest that textbooks an Web searching should take into account that searchers only tend to take a certain number of sources into consideration, that the searchers adjust their goals and objectives during searching, and that searchers reconsider the usefulness of sources at different stages of their work tasks as well as their search tasks.

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Abstract

Multitasking is the human ability to handle the demands of multiple tasks. Multitasking behavior involves the ordering of multiple tasks and switching between tasks. People often multitask when using information retrieval (IR) technologies as they seek information on more than one information problem over single or multiple search episodes. However, limited studies have examined how people order their information problems, especially during their Web search engine interaction. The aim of our exploratory study was to investigate assigned information problem ordering by forty (40) study participants engaged in Web search. Findings suggest that assigned information problem ordering was influenced by the following factors, including personal interest, problem knowledge, perceived level of information available on the Web, ease of finding information, level of importance and seeking information on information problems in order from general to specific. Personal interest and problem knowledge were the major factors during assigned information problem ordering. Implications of the findings and further research are discussed. The relationship between information problem ordering and gratification theory is an important area for further exploration.

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Abstract

Query reformulation is a key user behavior during Web search. Our research goal is to develop predictive models of query reformulation during Web searching. This article reports results from a study in which we automatically classified the query-reformulation patterns for 964,780 Web searching sessions, composed of 1,523,072 queries, to predict the next query reformulation. We employed an n-gram modeling approach to describe the probability of users transitioning from one query-reformulation state to another to predict their next state. We developed first-, second-, third-, and fourth-order models and evaluated each model for accuracy of prediction, coverage of the dataset, and complexity of the possible pattern set. The results show that Reformulation and Assistance account for approximately 45% of all query reformulations; furthermore, the results demonstrate that the first- and second-order models provide the best predictability, between 28 and 40% overall and higher than 70% for some patterns. Implications are that the n-gram approach can be used for improving searching systems and searching assistance.

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Abstract

The goal of this study is to understand whether providing a search intermediary familiar with a problem domain and its topical structure would support a user's Web searching tasks, especially complicated tasks with multifaceted topics, and whether the order of searching tasks or system usage influences their successful completion. This study investigates the effect of two factors, the interaction mode and the display layout, on the three main measures of the user's Web searching behaviors: effectiveness, efficiency, and usability. Two interaction modes are compared, mediation via a domain-specific document collection versus nonmediated search, and two display layouts, a combination of browsing-supporting hierarchic display and ranked list of results versus the simple linear list of search results. The results are analyzed in the Flow theory point of view; they were analyzed by order of the tasks and system usage order. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of how the mediation system and/or the combined display support a Web information user.

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Abstract

People commonly experience difficulties when searching the Web, arising from an incomplete knowledge regarding their information needs, an inability to formulate accurate queries, and a low tolerance for considering the relevance of the search results. While simple and easy to use interfaces have made Web search universally accessible, they provide little assistance for people to overcome the difficulties they experience when their information needs are more complex than simple fact-verification. In human-centred Web search, the purpose of the search engine expands from a simple information retrieval engine to a decision support system. People are empowered to take an active role in the search process, with the search engine supporting them in developing a deeper understanding of their information needs, assisting them in crafting and refining their queries, and aiding them in evaluating and exploring the search results. In this chapter, recent research in this domain is outlined and discussed.