Are people asking questions of general Web search engines?
Date
2003
Authors
Spink, Amanda S.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Emerald Group Publishing
Abstract
Recent studies show that many Web users only submit short queries and conduct short search sessions. This paper examines aspects of users' attempting longer more complex queries. Web search services such as Ask Jeeves - publicly accessible question and answer (Q&A) search engines - encourage queries in question or request format. In light of this trend, this study examines whether general Web queries are shifting towards a more question/request format. Previous studies show that some users were submitting question or request format queries to general non-Q&A Web search engines. This paper re-examines this issue by analysing large-scale Web query data from two different (US and European) Web query data sets, including 1.2 million Excite queries (www.excite.com) and 1.2 million AlltheWeb.com (http:// AlltheWeb.com) queries from 2001.
Description
Keywords
Computer science, Information science and library science, Search engines, Searchers, Internet, User studies, Computer software, Electronic commerce, Information retrieval, Information technology, Multimedia systems, Natural language processing systems, Web browsers, World wide web, Boolean queries, Query processing, Search engines
Citation
Özmutlu, S. vd. (2003). “Are people asking questions of general Web search engines?”. Online Information Review, 27(6), 396-406.