Revisiting User Information Needs in Aggregated Search

Aggregated search interfaces are a common way to present web search results, mixing different types of results into one single result page. Although numerous efforts have been made to infer users' information needs in "standard" search, we know little about users' information needs within the context of aggregated search. This paper presents the outcomes of a survey of 117 respondents, investigating users' preferences for their type of search result (image, news, video) and their type of information need (informational, navigational and transactional). The survey reveals that users' result preferences differ based on their underlying information needs, suggesting that the taxonomy provided by Broder [1] requires updating to reflect user information needs in the context of aggregated search. For instance, respondents indicated a preference for diverse results (news and reviews about a particular software product) for navigational and transactional queries rather than a single result (the web page to download that software product).

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