Study of Search Engine Transaction Logs Shows Little Change in How Users use Search Engines. A review of: Jansen, Bernard J., and Amanda Spink. “How Are We Searching the World Wide Web? A Comparison of Nine Search Engine Transaction Logs.” Information Processing &Management 42.1 (2006): 248‐263.

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

关键词: Search Engines;    User Studies;    Search Behaviour;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Objective – To examine the interactionsbetween users and search engines, and howthey have changed over time.
Design – Comparative analysis of searchengine transaction logs.
Setting – Nine major analyses of searchengine transaction logs.
Subjects – Nine web search engine studies(4 European, 5 American) over a seven‐yearperiod, covering the search engines Excite,Fireball, AltaVista, BWIE and AllTheWeb.
Methods – The results from individualstudies are compared by year of study forpercentages of single query sessions, one termqueries, operator (and, or, not, etc.)usage and single result page viewing. Aswell, the authors group the search queriesinto eleven different topical categories andcompare how the breakdown has changedover time.
Main Results – Based on the percentage ofsingle query sessions, it does not appear thatthe complexity of interactions has changedsignificantly for either the U.S.‐based or theEuropean‐based search engines. As well,there was little change observed in thepercentage of one‐term queries over theyears of study for either the U.S.‐based orthe European‐based search engines. Fewusers (generally less than 20%) use Booleanor other operators in their queries, and thesepercentages have remained relatively stable.One area of noticeable change is in thepercentage of users viewing only one resultspage, which has increased over the years ofstudy. Based on the studies of the U.S.‐basedsearch engines, the topical categories of‘People, Place or Things’ and ‘Commerce,Travel, Employment or Economy’ arebecoming more popular, while thecategories of ‘Sex and Pornography’ and‘Entertainment or Recreation’ are declining.
Conclusions – The percentage of usersviewing only one results page increasedduring the years of the study, while thepercentages of single query sessions, onetermsessions and operator usage remainedstable. The increase in single result pageviewing implies that users are tending toview fewer results per web query. Therewas also a significant difference in thepercentage of queries using Booleanoperators between the US‐based and theEuropean‐based search engines. One of thestudy’s findings was that results from astudy of a particular search engine cannotnecessarily be applied to all search engines.Finally, web search topics show a trendtowards information or commerce searchingrather than entertainment.

【 授权许可】

Unknown