Query reformulation for specific domain search: Keywords, ontology, domain name

In most cases, users are unable to precisely translate their information needs into a query format for the search system to process. Users often submit queries containing terms or keywords that do not match with their intended information. That is why user normally reformulates queries several times to gain more information and relevant set of results. The aim of this paper is to present evaluation of six techniques employed in query reformulation process. This work proposes query keyword, ontology and domain name, as well as the combination of those elements in reformulating query. The experimental result shows that query keyword element is much more important than ontology terms element. Furthermore, ontology terms and domain name are insufficient to be used alone, as it had incredibly increases the recall and decreases the precision. However combination of ontology terms and domain name with query keywords had produced better results.