Searching on the Web (poster abstract): two types of expertise

Efforts to improve Web search faciliti es call for improved understanding of user characteristics. We investigated the types of knowledge that are relevant for web-based information seeking, along with the knowledge structures and related strategies. In an exploratory field experiment, 12 establi shed Internet experts were first interviewed about search strategies and then performed a series of reali stic search tasks on the WWW. Based on this preliminary study a model of information searching on the WWW was derived and tested in a second study. In the second experiment two classes of potentiall y relevant types of knowledge were directly compared. Using a series of search tasks in an economics-related domain (introduction of the EURO currency) we investigated the effects of Web experience and domain-specific background knowledge on search strategies. We found independent and combined effects of both Web experience and domain knowledge, hinting at the importance of considering both types of expertise as cogniti ve factors in web-based searches.