Search (25 results, page 1 of 2)

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Abstract

Surfing the World Wide Web used to be cool, dude, real cool. But things have gotten hot - so hot that finding something useful an the Web is no longer cool. It is suffocating Web searchers in the smoke and debris of mountain-sized lists of hits, decisions about which search engines they should use, whether they will get lost in the dizzying maze of a subject directory, use the right syntax for the search engine at hand, enter keywords that are likely to retrieve hits an the topics they have in mind, or enlist a browser that has sufficient functionality to display the most promising hits. When it comes to Web searching, in a few short years we have gone from the cool image of surfing the Web into the frying pan of searching the Web. We can turn down the heat by rethinking what Web searchers are doing and introduce some order into the chaos. Web search strategies that are tool-based-oriented to specific Web searching tools such as search en gines, subject directories, and meta search engines-have been widely promoted, and these strategies are just not working. It is time to dissect what Web searching tools expect from searchers and adjust our search strategies to these new tools. This discussion offers Web searchers help in the form of search strategies that are based an strategies that librarians have been using for a long time to search commercial information retrieval systems like Dialog, NEXIS, Wilsonline, FirstSearch, and Data-Star.

Content

"Web searching is different from searching commercial IR systems. We can learn from search strategies recommended for searching IR systems, but most won't be effective for Web searching. Web searchers need strate gies that let search engines do the job they were designed to do. This article presents six new Web searching strategies that do just that."

Date

22. 9.1997 19:16:05

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Abstract

Purpose Web search is more and more moving into mobile contexts. However, screen size of mobile devices is limited and search engine result pages face a trade-off between offering informative snippets and optimal use of space. One factor clearly influencing this trade-off is snippet length. The purpose of this paper is to find out what snippet size to use in mobile web search. Design/methodology/approach For this purpose, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted showing participants search interfaces with snippets of one, three or five lines on a mobile device to analyze 17 dependent variables. In total, 31 participants took part in the study. Each of the participants solved informational and navigational tasks. Findings Results indicate a strong influence of page fold on scrolling behavior and attention distribution across search results. Regardless of query type, short snippets seem to provide too little information about the result, so that search performance and subjective measures are negatively affected. Long snippets of five lines lead to better performance than medium snippets for navigational queries, but to worse performance for informational queries. Originality/value Although space in mobile search is limited, this study shows that longer snippets improve usability and user experience. It further emphasizes that page fold plays a stronger role in mobile than in desktop search for attention distribution.

Date

20. 1.2015 18:30:22

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Abstract

Despite a number of studies looking at Web experience and Web searching tactics and behaviours, the specific relationships between experience and cognitive search strategies have not been widely researched. This study investigates how the cognitive search strategies of 80 participants might vary with Web experience as they engaged in two researcher-defined tasks and two participant-defined information seeking tasks. Each of the two researcher-defined tasks and participant-defined tasks included a directed search task and a general-purpose browsing task. While there were almost no significant performance differences between experience levels on any of the four tasks, there were significant differences in the use of cognitive search strategies. Participants with higher levels of Web experience were more likely to use "Parallel player", "Parallel hub-and-spoke", "Known address search domain" and "Known address" strategies, whereas participants with lower levels of Web experience were more likely to use "Virtual tourist", "Link-dependent", "To-the-point", "Sequential player", "Search engine narrowing", and "Broad first" strategies. The patterns of use and differences between researcher-defined and participant-defined tasks and between directed search tasks and general-purpose browsing tasks are also discussed, although the distribution of search strategies by Web experience were not statistically significant for each individual task.

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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

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

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.

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Abstract

The aim of the work described in this paper is to evaluate the influencing effects of query-biased summaries in web searching. For this purpose, a summarisation system has been developed, and a summary tailored to the user's query is generated automatically for each document retrieved. The system aims to provide both a better means of assessing document relevance than titles or abstracts typical of many web search result lists. Through visiting each result page at retrieval-time, the system provides the user with an idea of the current page content and thus deals with the dynamic nature of the web. To examine the effectiveness of this approach, a task-oriented, comparative evaluation between four different web retrieval systems was performed; two that use query-biased summarisation, and two that use the standard ranked titles/abstracts approach. The results from the evaluation indicate that query-biased summarisation techniques appear to be more useful and effective in helping users gauge document relevance than the traditional ranked titles/abstracts approach. The same methodology was used to compare the effectiveness of two of the web's major search engines; AltaVista and Google.

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Abstract

Categorized overviews of web search results are a promising way to support user exploration, understanding, and discovery. These search interfaces combine a metadata-based overview with the list of search results to enable a rich form of interaction. A study of 24 sophisticated users carrying out complex tasks suggests how searchers may adapt their search tactics when using categorized overviews. This mixed methods study evaluated categorized overviews of web search results organized into thematic, geographic, and government categories. Participants conducted four exploratory searches during a 2-hour session to generate ideas for newspaper articles about specified topics such as "human smuggling." Results showed that subjects explored deeper while feeling more organized, and that the categorized overview helped subjects better assess their results, although no significant differences were detected in the quality of the article ideas. A qualitative analysis of searcher comments identified seven tactics that participants reported adopting when using categorized overviews. This paper concludes by proposing a set of guidelines for the design of exploratory search interfaces. An understanding of the impact of categorized overviews on search tactics will be useful to web search researchers, search interface designers, information architects and web developers.

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Abstract

This paper uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodology to analyse differences between Finnish and American web searchers (n=27 per country) in their choice of initial search strategies (direct address, subject directory and search engines) and their reasoning underlying these choices, with data gathered via a questionnaire. The paper looks at these differences for four types of questions with two variables: closed/open and predictable/unpredictable source of answer (n=16 questions per searcher; total n=864 questions). The paper found significant differences between the two groups' initial search strategies and for three of the four types of questions. The reasoning varied across countries and questions as well, with Finns mentioning fewer reasons although both groups mentioned in aggregate a total of 1,284 reasons in twenty-four reason categories. The reasoning indicated that both country groups considered not only question-related reasons but also source- and search-strategy related reasons in making their decision. The research raises questions about considering cultural differences in designing web search access mechanisms.

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Abstract

This research investigates how people's perceptions of information retrieval (IR) systems, their perceptions of search tasks, and their perceptions of self-efficacy influence the amount of invested mental effort (AIME) they put into using two different IR systems: a Web search engine and a library system. It also explores the impact of mental effort on an end user's search experience. To assess AIME in online searching, two experiments were conducted using these methods: Experiment 1 relied on self-reports and Experiment 2 employed the dual-task technique. In both experiments, data were collected through search transaction logs, a pre-search background questionnaire, a post-search questionnaire and an interview. Important findings are these: (1) subjects invested greater mental effort searching a library system than searching the Web; (2) subjects put little effort into Web searching because of their high sense of self-efficacy in their searching ability and their perception of the easiness of the Web; (3) subjects did not recognize that putting mental effort into searching was something needed to improve the search results; and (4) data collected from multiple sources proved to be effective for assessing mental effort in online searching.

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Abstract

This book provides practical strategies which enable the advanced web user to locate information effectively and to form a precise evaluation of the accuracy of that information. Although the book provides a brief but thorough review of the technologies which are currently available for these purposes, most of the book concerns practical `future-proof' techniques which are independent of changes in the tools available. For example, the book covers: how to retrieve salient information quickly; how to remove or compensate for bias; and tuition of novice Internet users.

Content

Key Features - Importantly, the book enables readers to develop strategies which will continue to be useful despite the rapidly-evolving state of the Internet and Internet technologies - it is not about technological `tricks'. - Enables readers to be aware of and compensate for bias and errors which are ubiquitous an the Internet. - Provides contemporary information an the deficiencies in web skills of novice users as well as practical techniques for teaching such users. The Authors Dr Alison Stacey works at the Learning Resource Centre, Cambridge Regional College. Dr Adrian Stacey, formerly based at Cambridge University, is a software programmer. Readership The book is aimed at a wide range of librarians and other information professionals who need to retrieve information from the Internet efficiently, to evaluate their confidence in the information they retrieve and/or to train others to use the Internet. It is primarily aimed at intermediate to advanced users of the Internet. Contents Fundamentals of information retrieval from the Internet - why learn web searching technique; types of information requests; patterns for information retrieval; leveraging the technology: Search term choice: pinpointing information an the web - why choose queries carefully; making search terms work together; how to pick search terms; finding the 'unfindable': Blas an the Internet - importance of bias; sources of bias; usergenerated bias: selecting information with which you already agree; assessing and compensating for bias; case studies: Query reformulation and longer term strategies - how to interact with your search engine; foraging for information; long term information retrieval: using the Internet to find trends; automating searches: how to make your machine do your work: Assessing the quality of results- how to assess and ensure quality: The novice user and teaching internet skills - novice users and their problems with the web; case study: research in a college library; interpreting 'second hand' web information.

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Abstract

Adapting the consumer behavior selectivity model to the Web environment, this paper's key contribution is the introduction of a self-concept orientation model of Web information seeking. This model, which addresses gender, effort, and information content factors, questions the commonly assumed equivalence of sex and gender by specifying the measurement of gender-related selfconcept traits known as self- and other-orientation. Regression analyses identified associations between self-orientation, other-orientation, and self-reported search frequencies for content with identical subject domain (e.g., medical information, government information) and differing relevance (i.e., important to the individual personally versus important to someone close to him or her). Self- and other-orientation interacted such that when individuals were highly self-oriented, their frequency of search for both self- and other-relevant information depended on their level of other-orientation. Specifically, high-self/high-other individuals, with a comprehensive processing strategy, searched most often, whereas high-self/low-other respondents, with an effort minimization strategy, reported the lowest search frequencies. This interaction pattern was even more pronounced for other-relevant information seeking. We found no sex differences in search frequency for either self-relevant or other-relevant information.

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Abstract

Search engines are very popular tools for collecting information from distributed resources. They provide not only search facilities, but they also offer directories for users to browse content divided into groups. In this paper, we've adopted an individual differences approach to explore user's attitudes towards various interface features provided by existing Web directories. Among a variety of individual differences, cognitive style is a particularly important characteristic that influences the effectiveness of information seeking. Empirical results indicate that users' cognitive styles influence their reactions to the organization of subject categories, presentation of the results, and screen layout. We developed a set of design guidelines an the basis of these results, and propose a flexible interface that adopts these guidelines to accommodate the preferences of different cognitive style groups.

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Abstract

Given that time is money, Web searching can be a very expensive proposition. Even with the best search technology, the usefulness of search results depends on the searcher's ability to use that technology effectively. In an effort to improve this ability, our research investigates the effects of logic training, interface training, and the type of search interface on the search process. In a study with 145 participants, we found that even limited training in basic Boolean logic improved performance with a simple search interface. Surprisingly, for users of an interface that assisted them in forming syntactically correct Boolean queries, performance was negatively affected by logic training and unaffected by interface training. Use of the assisted interface itself, however, resulted in strong improvements in performance over use of the simple interface. In addition to being useful for search engine providers, these findings are important for all companies that rely heavily on search for critical aspects of their operations, in that they demonstrate simple means by which the search experience can be improved for their employees and customers.

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