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In quest of goldilocks ranges in searching for information on the web

Anna Matysek (Faculty of Humanities, Institute of Culture Studies, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland)
Jacek Tomaszczyk (Faculty of Humanities, Institute of Culture Studies, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland)

Journal of Documentation

ISSN: 0022-0418

Article publication date: 25 May 2021

Issue publication date: 22 February 2022

254

Abstract

Purpose

The quest to discover optimal conditions or amounts has been carried out in many scientific disciplines and practical fields. In astrophysics, biology, medicine, psychology and education, the quest has resulted in finding the right amount of something, a desirable middle between extremes, a balance between conditions or the optimal state of a system. The results are referred to as the Goldilocks principle, which is based on the idea of being “just right”. The aim of our study was to find out if there are any measures in information search that could be identified as Goldilocks ranges.

Design/methodology/approach

We conducted a user experiment in which 68 participants carried out a time-unlimited, topical search task involving finding relevant websites on the basis of which the participants were supposed to prepare a presentation on a given topic. We examined aspects of their search behavior.

Findings

We found that information search Goldilocks ranges can be identified for a length of a search session, number of relevant results, number of queries submitted and number of search engine results pages (SERPs) visited. This preliminary study has resulted in indicating the following dominant ranges: Number of relevant documents found: 5–8; Time spent searching: 21–35 min; Number of queries submitted: 3–7; Number of SERPs viewed: 1–3.

Originality/value

Till now, no one has studied Goldilocks ranges in information retrieval. The Goldilocks ranges have some practical implications for improving the effectiveness of web searching.

Keywords

Citation

Matysek, A. and Tomaszczyk, J. (2022), "In quest of goldilocks ranges in searching for information on the web", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 78 No. 2, pp. 264-283. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2021-0019

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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