Interactive Search Support for Difficult Web Queries

Short and common web queries are aptly supported by state-of-the-art search engines but performance and user experience are degraded when web queries are longer and less common. Extending previous solutions that automatically shorten queries, we introduce searchAssist: a novel search interface that provides interactive support for difficult web queries. The query logs and questionnaires from a naturalistic study of 90 web users' search behaviors show that the usage rate of searchAssist for difficult queries was almost 40%. The results also highlight the importance of term dropping for long queries, and the improvements obtained in topical relevance when our searchers used searchAssist.

[1]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  A case for interaction: a study of interactive information retrieval behavior and effectiveness , 1996, CHI.

[2]  N. Given,et al.  Predicting query performance on the web , 2010, SIGIR.

[3]  James Allan,et al.  Effective and efficient user interaction for long queries , 2008, SIGIR '08.

[4]  Niranjan Balasubramanian,et al.  Exploring reductions for long web queries , 2010, SIGIR.

[5]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  Iterative exploration, design and evaluation of support for query reformulation in interactive information retrieval , 2001, Inf. Process. Manag..

[6]  Jenifer Tidwell,et al.  Designing interfaces - patterns for effective interaction design , 2019 .

[7]  Ian Ruthven,et al.  Re-examining the potential effectiveness of interactive query expansion , 2003, SIGIR.

[8]  Karl Gyllstrom,et al.  A comparison of query and term suggestion features for interactive searching , 2009, SIGIR.

[9]  W. Bruce Croft,et al.  Discovering key concepts in verbose queries , 2008, SIGIR '08.

[10]  Peter Bruza,et al.  Searching the World Wide Web made easy? the cognitive load imposed by query refinement mechanisms , 1998 .

[11]  Ryen W. White,et al.  Studying the use of popular destinations to enhance web search interaction , 2007, SIGIR.

[12]  Ryen W. White,et al.  Mining Historic Query Trails to Label Long and Rare Search Engine Queries , 2010, TWEB.

[13]  Peter G. Anick.  Using terminological feedback for web search refinement: a log-based study , 2003, SIGIR.

[14]  Johanna Enberg,et al.  Query Expansion , 2018, Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. 2nd Ed..

[15]  Efthimis N. Efthimiadis,et al.  Analyzing and evaluating query reformulation strategies in web search logs , 2009, CIKM.

[16]  Jenifer Tidwell.  Designing Interfaces , 2005 .

[17]  Vitor R. Carvalho,et al.  Reducing long queries using query quality predictors , 2009, SIGIR.

[18]  W. Bruce Croft,et al.  Analysis of long queries in a large scale search log , 2009, WSCD '09.