Multitasking Web search on Alta Vista

Author

Spink, Amanda ; Park, Minsoo ; Jansen, Bernard J. ; Pedersen, Jan

Author_Institution

Sch. of Inf. Sci., Pittsburgh Univ., PA, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2004

fDate

5-7 April 2004

Firstpage

309

Abstract

A user´s single session with a Web search engine may consist of seeking information on single or multiple topics. Most Web search sessions consist of two queries of two words. We present findings from a study of two-query search sessions on the Alta Vista Web search engine to examine the degree of multitasking search by typical Web searchers. A sample of two-query length search sessions were filtered from Alta Vista transaction logs from 2003. Findings include: (1) 81% of two-query sessions were multitasking searches; and (2) there are a broad variety of search topics in multitasking search sessions. The implications of our findings for Web design and further research are discussed.

Keywords

content-based retrieval; search engines; Alta Vista; Web design; Web search engine; multitasking Web search; multitasking search sessions; two-query search sessions; Electronic mail; Information filtering; Information filters; Information retrieval; Multitasking; Productivity; Psychology; Search engines; Web design; Web search;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Information Technology: Coding and Computing, 2004. Proceedings. ITCC 2004. International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7695-2108-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ITCC.2004.1286471

Filename

1286471