Analyzing geographic queries

The aim of this study was to analyze the 2001 Excite query log to investigate the extent and variation of Web queries containing geographic terms. In particular, an investigation into what people search for when they use geographic terms, the ways in which they describe a geographic location, the terminology used to find geographically related information and the structure of users’ queries when looking for geographically related information on the Web. This study also attempted to determine how geographically related queries differ from other queries. Geographically related queries formed nearly one fifth of all queries submitted to Excite, the terms occurring most frequently being place names. Geographic queries were also shown to be longer than average and the association of two or more terms within geographic queries was found to be high.