A General Classification of (Search) Queries and Terms

Web information systems are the most popular service for online users to retrieve data (pages, images, or files) on the Internet. In order to get a more profound insight into the method and the target of Web searches, we have tracked the queries that have been entered at the Lycos search engine over several months. The analysis of this vast amount of empirical data provides us with a deeper understanding of online users´ behavior. In this paper, we focus on time-dependency in the usage of terms. Furthermore, we use aspects from the human online information processing in search engines and from topic detection in documents to discuss a general classification of terms. As a result, we find time-dependent clusters of (search) terms around particular subjects. Based on these findings, strategies for the design of search engines and Web pages which focus on the (information) consumer are developed. The basic classification which is presented in this paper can also be leveraged as an indication of the adequacy of mathematical models for simulating the usage of terms over time