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ESI Special Topics, May 2003
Citing URL: http://www.esi-topics.com/fmf/2003/may03-AmandaSpink.html

From •>>May 2003

Amanda Spink answers a few questions about this month's fast moving front in the field of Computer Science.

Field: Computer Science
Article Title: "Real life, real users, and real needs: a study and analysis of user queries on the web"
Author: Jansen, BJ;Spink, A;Saracevic, T
Journal: INFORM PROCESS MANAGE, 36: (2) 207-227 MAR 2000
Addresses:
Penn State Univ, Sch Informat Sci & Technol, State Coll, PA 16801 USA.
Penn State Univ, Sch Informat Sci & Technol, State Coll, PA 16801 USA.
US Mil Acad, Dept Elect Engn & Comp Sci, W Point, NY 10996 USA.
Rutgers State Univ, Sch Commun Informat & Lib Studies, New Brunswick, NJ 08903 USA.


ST:  Why do you think your paper is highly cited?  

Our paper is highly cited because it's one of the few large-scale studies of public web searching using data gathered from Web search engines.  The paper provides insights into public Web searching and querying, as well as the subjects searched and trends identified.

ST:  Does it describe a new discovery or new methodology that's useful to others?   

Our findings in relation to the public searching of the Web are useful to researchers of user behavior and Web systems design, and also to Web policy analysts.

ST:  How did you become involved in this research? 

Dr. Jim Jansen and I obtained a large query data set from the Web company Excite in 1997 that led to our initial and ongoing studies.

ST:  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms? 

The paper is significant as it defines the general short length of Web users’ queries and session time and the lack of advanced searching by many users in combination with the broad language used in Web queries. The paper also notes that there are only a limited proportion of Web queries which are pornography-related.End

Amanda Spink
Associate Professor
School of Information Sciences and Technology
The Pennsylvania State University 
University Park, PA, USA

Read comments by Dr. Jim Jansen; co-author of this New Hot Paper.

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ESI Special Topics, May 2003
 Citing URL: http://www.esi-topics.com/fmf/2003/may03-AmandaSpink.html
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