Analyzing user click paths in a Wikipedia navigation game

Due to the enormous success of Web search technology navigation became only a second-class information seeking strategy on the Web. However, numerous studies highlight the importance of navigation as an alternative information retrieval technique to search. These studies provide evidences that the most efficient information finding occurs in the settings where search and navigation seamlessly integrate and complement each other. Recently, the research community has also recognized the importance of understanding the human navigation behavior since the knowledge on how users navigate helps in designing optimal navigation structures. In this paper we try to gain more insight in how users navigate towards a known target page in Wikipedia. To that end, we conduct an initial analysis of user click paths from a Wikipedia navigation game. In addition, we compare the structure of Wikipedia navigational paths with the structure of search paths in social networks and routing paths in general complex networks.