scholarly journals On the relationship between click rate and relevance for search engines

Author(s):  
K. Ali ◽  
C. C. Chang
Author(s):  
Daniele Besomi

This paper surveys the economic dictionaries available on the internet, both for free and on subscription, addressed to various kinds of audiences from schoolchildren to research students and academics. The focus is not much on content, but on whether and how the possibilities opened by electronic editing and by the modes of distribution and interaction opened by the internet are exploited in the organization and presentation of the materials. The upshot is that although a number of web dictionaries have taken advantage of some of the innovations offered by the internet (in particular the possibility of regularly updating, of turning cross-references into hyperlinks, of adding links to external materials, of adding more or less complex search engines), the observation that internet lexicography has mostly produced more ef! cient dictionary without, however, fundamentally altering the traditional paper structure can be con! rmed for this particular subset of reference works. In particular, what is scarcely explored is the possibility of visualizing the relationship between entries, thus abandoning the project of the early encyclopedists right when the technology provides the means of accomplishing it.


Author(s):  
Filippo Trevisan

This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities involved in incorporating publicly available search engine data in scholarly research. In recent years, an increasing number of researchers have started to include tools such as Google Trends (http://google.com/trends) in their work. However, a central ‘search engine’ field of inquiry has yet to emerge. Rather, the use of search engine data to address social research questions is spread across many disciplines, which makes search valuable across fields but not critical to any one particular area. In an effort to stimulate a comprehensive debate on these issues, this paper reviews the work of pioneering scholars who devised inventive — if experimental — ways of interpreting data generated through search engine accessory applications and makes the point that search engines should be regarded not only as central objects of research, but also as fundamental tools for broader social inquiry. Specific concerns linked to this methodological shift are identified and discussed, including: the relationship with other, more established social research methods; doubts over the representativeness of search engine data; the need to contextualize publicly available search engine data with other types of evidence; and the limited granularity afforded to researchers by tools such as Google Trends. The paper concludes by reflecting on the combination of search engine data with other forms of inquiry as an example of arguably inelegant yet innovative and effective ‘kludgy’ design (Karpf, 2012).


Author(s):  
Martin Feuz ◽  
Matthew Fuller ◽  
Felix Stalder

Web search engines have become indispensable tools for finding information online effectively. As the range of information, context and users of Internet searches has grown, the relationship between the search query, search interest and user has become more tenuous. Not all users are seeking the same information, even if they use the same query term. Thus, the quality of search results has, at least potentially, been decreasing. Search engines have begun to respond to this problem by trying to personalise search in order to deliver more relevant results to the users. A query is now evaluated in the context of a user’s search history and other data compiled into a personal profile and associated with statistical groups. This, at least, is the promise stated by the search engines themselves. This paper tries to assess the current reality of the personalisation of search results. We analyse the mechanisms of personalisation in the case of Google web search by empirically testing three commonly held assumptions about what personalisation does. To do this, we developed new digital methods which are explained here. The findings suggest that Google personal search does not fully provide the much-touted benefits for its search users. More likely, it seems to serve the interest of advertisers in providing more relevant audiences to them.


2010 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gerke ◽  
Jack M. Maness

A statistical analysis of responses to a LibQUAL+™ survey at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB) was conducted to investigate factors related to patrons’ satisfaction with electronic collections. It was found that a respondent’s discipline was not related to his or her satisfaction with the Libraries’ electronic collection, nor was the frequency with which the respondent used the Libraries’ facilities or used commercial search engines. The factors significantly related to users’ satisfaction with electronic collections were the frequency with which they used the Libraries’ Web site, and, most interestingly, the physical library they most often visited.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 706
Author(s):  
Pengfei Li ◽  
Yin Zhang ◽  
Bin Zhang

In exploratory search, users sometimes combine two or more issued queries into new queries. We present such a kind of search behavior as query combination behavior. We find that the queries after combination usually can better meet users’ information needs. We also observe that users combine queries for different motivations, which leads to different types of query combination behaviors. Previous work on understanding user exploratory search behaviors has focused on how people reformulate queries, but not on how and why they combine queries. Being able to answer these questions is important for exploring how users search and learn during information retrieval processes and further developing support to assist searchers. In this paper, we first describe a two-layer hierarchical structure for understanding the space of query combination behavior types. We manually classify query combination behavior sessions from AOL and Sogou search engines and explain the relationship from combining queries to success. We then characterize some key aspects of this behavior and propose a classifier that can automatically classify types of query combination behavior using behavioral features. Finally, we summarize our findings and show how search engines can better assist searchers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6993
Author(s):  
Jelena Šaković Jovanović ◽  
Radoje Vujadinović ◽  
Elizabeta Mitreva ◽  
Cristiano Fragassa ◽  
Aleksandar Vujović

This paper postulates that the effect of e-commerce on firm performance is not direct and needs to be examined using mediating factors. The Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) model was employed with the data of the Flash Eurobarometer 439 Survey entitled The Use of Online Marketplaces and Search Engines by small and medium enterprises. The obtained findings provide support for the mediating hypothesis. To be more precise, while the relationship between e-commerce and firm performance is negative, it is positively mediated by certain types of internet sales channels. In particular, the benefits of e-commerce in terms of higher sales are more pronounced when firms use commercial websites and online marketplaces. On the other hand, the interaction between e-commerce and search engines has an insignificant effect on firm performance. This study advances research on e-commerce by emphasizing the importance of mediating effect.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Milonas

An exploratory study was conduced to examine the design aspects of Web facets found in the search result pages of two search engines: Exalead and Excite. The goal of the study was to determine if Web facet design could contribute to perceived ease of use. This study builds upon findings from an earlier study (Milonas, 2010) in which the results indicated that users perceived the Web facets evident in the search result pages of the Exalead search engine easier to use than those found in Excite. The researcher surmised that the design of these Web facets might have contributed to the difference in perceived ease of use. The relationship between design and user perception in determining the ease of use of Web facets within these two search engines is explored. In the first component of the study, an expert inspection of the various design aspects of the search result pages of Exalead and Excite was conducted.  In the second part of the study, five participants conducted an experiment using the Web facets found in the search result pages of the two search engines. Findings of both the expert inspection and the usability evaluation showed that there does not seem to be a significant difference in the design of Web facets within the two search engines. The findings seem to indicate that design of Web facets is not a contributory factor in terms of Web facet ease of use.


Author(s):  
Elena De la Poza ◽  
Daniel Castelló ◽  
Natividad Guadalajara

This work analyzes the relationship between the digital information provided by search engines on the Internet and the volume of sales or revenues in the art market in order to quantify the variable artist's reputation. In particular, the usefulness of digital media information is analyzed to interpret past sales in the art market or, conversely, to estimate future sales in the short term. Finally, we study the ability of digital information to explain the volume of activity (number of lots sold) or what is the same the degree of liquidity of the secondary market of artworks.


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