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Article
Publication date: 18 July 2016

Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet, Judit Bar-Ilan and Mark Levene

One of the under-explored aspects in the process of user information seeking behaviour is influence of time on relevance evaluation. It has been shown in previous studies that…

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Abstract

Purpose

One of the under-explored aspects in the process of user information seeking behaviour is influence of time on relevance evaluation. It has been shown in previous studies that individual users might change their assessment of search results over time. It is also known that aggregated judgements of multiple individual users can lead to correct and reliable decisions; this phenomenon is known as the “wisdom of crowds”. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether aggregated judgements will be more stable and thus more reliable over time than individual user judgements.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study two simple measures are proposed to calculate the aggregated judgements of search results and compare their reliability and stability to individual user judgements. In addition, the aggregated “wisdom of crowds” judgements were used as a means to compare the differences between human assessments of search results and search engine’s rankings. A large-scale user study was conducted with 87 participants who evaluated two different queries and four diverse result sets twice, with an interval of two months. Two types of judgements were considered in this study: relevance on a four-point scale, and ranking on a ten-point scale without ties.

Findings

It was found that aggregated judgements are much more stable than individual user judgements, yet they are quite different from search engine rankings.

Practical implications

The proposed “wisdom of crowds”-based approach provides a reliable reference point for the evaluation of search engines. This is also important for exploring the need of personalisation and adapting search engine’s ranking over time to changes in users preferences.

Originality/value

This is a first study that applies the notion of “wisdom of crowds” to examine an under-explored in the literature phenomenon of “change in time” in user evaluation of relevance.

Details

Aslib Journal of Information Management, vol. 68 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-3806

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 August 2011

Nadjla Hariri

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of relevance ranking on Google by comparing the system's assessment of relevance with the users' views. The…

3627

Abstract

Purpose

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of relevance ranking on Google by comparing the system's assessment of relevance with the users' views. The research aims to find out whether the presumably objective relevance ranking of Google based on the PageRank and some other factors in fact matches users' subjective judgments of relevance.

Design/methodology/approach

This research investigated the relevance ranking of Google's retrieved results using 34 searches conducted by users in real search sessions. The results pages 1‐4 (i.e. the first 40 results) were examined by the users to identify relevant documents. Based on these data the frequency of relevant documents according to the appearance order of retrieved documents in the first four results pages was calculated. The four results pages were also compared in terms of precision.

Findings

In 50 per cent and 47.06 per cent of the searches the documents ranked 5th and 1st, (i.e. from the first pages of the retrieved results) respectively, were most relevant according to the users' viewpoints. Yet even in the fourth results pages there were three documents that were judged most relevant by the users in more than 40 per cent of the searches. There were no significant differences between the precision of the four results pages except between pages 1 and 3.

Practical implications

The results will help users of search engines, especially Google, to decide how many pages of the retrieved results to examine.

Originality/value

Search engine design will benefit from the results of this study as it experimentally evaluates the effectiveness of Google's relevance ranking.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 35 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 29 November 2011

Carla Teixeira Lopes and Cristina Ribeiro

The intent of this work is to evaluate several generalist and health‐specific search engines for retrieval of health information by consumers: to compare the retrieval…

1431

Abstract

Purpose

The intent of this work is to evaluate several generalist and health‐specific search engines for retrieval of health information by consumers: to compare the retrieval effectiveness of these engines for different types of clinical queries, medical specialties and condition severity; and to compare the use of evaluation metrics for binary relevance scales and for graded ones.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a study in which users evaluated the relevance of documents retrieved by four search engines for two different health information needs. Users could choose between generalist (Bing, Google, Sapo and Yahoo!) and health‐specific (MedlinePlus, SapoSaúde and WebMD) search engines. The authors then analysed the differences between search engines and groups of information needs with six different measures: graded average precision (gap), average precision (ap), gap@5, gap@10, ap@5 and ap@10.

Findings

The results show that generalist web search engines surpass the precision of health‐specific engines. Google has the best performance, mainly in the top ten results. It was found that information needs associated with severe conditions are associated with higher precision, as are overview and psychiatry questions.

Originality/value

The study is one of the first to use a recently proposed measure to evaluate the effectiveness of retrieval systems with graded relevance scales. It includes tasks from several medical specialties, types of clinical questions and different levels of severity which, to the best of the authors' knowledge, has not been done before. Moreover, users have considerable involvement in the experiment. The results help in understanding how search engines differ in their responses to health information needs, what types of online health information are more common on the web and how to improve this type of search.

Article
Publication date: 20 June 2016

Sungin Lee, Wonhong Jang, Eunsol Lee and Sam G. Oh

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of, and identify core techniques of, search engine optimization (SEO) techniques applied to the web (http://lg-sl.net) and…

6953

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of, and identify core techniques of, search engine optimization (SEO) techniques applied to the web (http://lg-sl.net) and mobile (http//m.lg-sl.net) Science Land content and services at LG Sangnam Library in Korea.

Design/methodology/approach

In accordance with three major SEO guidelines, ten SEO techniques were identified and applied, and their implications were extracted on three areas: improved search engine accessibility, increased relevance between site content and search engine keywords, and improved site credibility. The effects were quantitatively analyzed in terms of registered search engine keywords and influx of visits via search engines.

Findings

This study shows that SEO techniques help increase the exposure of the library services and the number of visitors through search engines.

Practical implications

SEO techniques have been applied to a few non-Korean information service organizations, but it is not a well-accepted practice in Korean libraries. And the dominant search engines in Korea have published their own SEO guidelines. Prior to this study, no significant endeavors have been undertaken in the context of Korean library services that have adopted SEO techniques to boost exposure of library services and increase user traffics.

Originality/value

This is the first published study that has applied optimized SEO techniques to Korean web and mobile library services, in order to demonstrate the usefulness of the techniques for maximized exposure of library content.

Details

Library Hi Tech, vol. 34 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0737-8831

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 September 2010

Sanjib K. Deka and Narendra Lahkar

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the performance and efficiency of the five most used search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo!, Live, Ask, and AOL, in retrieving internet…

1955

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the performance and efficiency of the five most used search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo!, Live, Ask, and AOL, in retrieving internet resources at specific points of time using a large number of complex queries.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to examine the performance of the five search engines, five sets of experiments were conducted using 50 complex queries within two different time frames. The data were evaluated using Excel and SPSS software.

Findings

The paper results highlight the fact that different web search engines, which use different technology to find and present web information, yield different first page search results. The overall analysis of the findings of different measures reveals that Google has a significantly higher rate of performance in retrieving web resources as compared with the other four search engines. Yahoo! is the second best in terms of retrieval performance. The other three search engines did not performed satisfactorily compared with Google and Yahoo!

Originality/value

The paper will provide important insight into the effectiveness of major search engines and their ability to retrieve relevant internet resources. This paper has produced key findings that are important for all web search engine users and researchers, and the web industry. The findings will also assist search companies to improve their services.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 34 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2005

Lin‐Chih Chen and Cheng‐Jye Luh

This study aims to present a new web page recommendation system that can help users to reduce navigational time on the internet.

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to present a new web page recommendation system that can help users to reduce navigational time on the internet.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed design is based on the primacy effect of browsing behavior, that users prefer top ranking items in search results. This approach is intuitive and requires no training data at all.

Findings

A user study showed that users are more satisfied with the proposed search methods than with general search engines using hot keywords. Moreover, two performance measures confirmed that the proposed search methods out‐perform other metasearch and search engines.

Research limitations/implications

The research has limitations and future work is planned along several directions. First, the search methods implemented are primarily based on the keyword match between the contents of web pages and the user query items. Using the semantic web to recommend concepts and items relevant to the user query might be very helpful in finding the exact contents that users want, particularly when the users do not have enough knowledge about the domains in which they are searching. Second, offering a mechanism that groups search results to improve the way search results are segmented and displayed also assists users to locate the contents they need. Finally, more user feedback is needed to fine‐tune the search parameters including α and β to improve the performance.

Practical implications

The proposed model can be used to improve the search performance of any search engine.

Originality/value

First, compared with the democratic voting procedure used by metasearch engines, search engine vector voting (SVV) enables a specific combination of search parameters, denoted as α and β, to be applied to a voted search engine, so that users can either narrow or expand their search results to meet their search preferences. Second, unlike page quality analysis, the hyperlink prediction (HLP) determines qualified pages by simply measuring their user behavior function (UBF) values, and thus takes less computing power. Finally, the advantages of HLP over statistical analysis are that it does not need training data, and it can target both multi‐site and site‐specific analysis.

Details

Internet Research, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1066-2243

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 April 2016

Rahmatollah Fattahi, Mehri Parirokh, Mohammd Hosien Dayyani, Abdolrasoul Khosravi and Mojgan Zareivenovel

One of the most effective ways information retrieval (IR) systems including Web search engines can improve relevance performance is to provide their users with tools for…

1157

Abstract

Purpose

One of the most effective ways information retrieval (IR) systems including Web search engines can improve relevance performance is to provide their users with tools for facilitating query expansion. Search engines such as Google provide users with keyword suggest tools. This paper aims to investigate users’ criteria in relevance judgment regarding Google’s keywords suggest tool and to see how such keywords would lead to more relevant results from the viewpoint of users.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a mixed method approach, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 60 postgraduate students at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran, using four different instruments (questionnaire, thinking aloud technique, query logs and interviews).

Findings

Among other criteria, the “relation between suggested keywords and the information need” (with the mean rate of 3.53 of four) was considered the most important by searchers in selecting suggested keywords for query expansion. Also, the “relation between suggested Keywords and the retrieved items” (with the mean rate of 3.62) was considered the second most important criterion in judging the relevance of the retrieved results. The participants agreed that the suggested keywords by Google improved the retrieval relevance. The content analysis of the participants’ aloud-thinking sessions and the interviews approved such findings.

Originality/value

This research makes a contribution to the need of designers of IR systems regarding the use of add words for query expansion. It also helps librarians how to instruct searchers with expanding their queries to retrieve more relevant results. Another contribution of the study is the identification of a number of new relevance judgment criteria for Web-based environments.

Details

The Electronic Library, vol. 34 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-0473

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 August 2013

Lourdes Moreno and Paloma Martinez

The purpose of this paper is to show that the pursuit of a high search engine relevance ranking for a webpage is not necessarily incompatible with the pursuit of web accessibility.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to show that the pursuit of a high search engine relevance ranking for a webpage is not necessarily incompatible with the pursuit of web accessibility.

Design/methodology/approach

The research described arose from an investigation into the observed phenomenon that pages from accessible websites regularly appear near the top of search engine (such as Google) results, without any deliberate effort having been made through the application of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to achieve this. The reasons for this phenomenon appear to be found in the numerous similarities and overlapping characteristics between SEO factors and web accessibility guidelines. Context is provided through a review of sources including accessibility standards and relevant SEO studies and the relationship between SEO and web accessibility is described. The particular overlapping factors between the two are identified and the precise nature of the overlaps is explained in greater detail.

Findings

The available literature provides firm evidence that the overlapping factors not only serve to ensure the accessibility of a website for all users, but are also useful for the optimization of the website's search engine ranking. The research demonstrates that any SEO project undertaken should include, as a prerequisite, the proper design of accessible web content, inasmuch as search engines will interpret the web accessibility achieved as an indicator of quality and will be able to better access and index the resulting web content.

Originality/value

The present study indicates how developing websites with high visibility in search engine results also makes their content more accessible.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 37 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 February 2008

Fotis Lazarinis

Image searching is a common activity for web users. Search engines offer image retrieval services based on textual queries. Previous studies have shown that web searching is more…

Abstract

Purpose

Image searching is a common activity for web users. Search engines offer image retrieval services based on textual queries. Previous studies have shown that web searching is more demanding when the search is not in English and does not use a Latin‐based language. The aim of this paper is to explore the behaviour of the major search engines in image retrieval using Greek text queries and to present and evaluate an image metaseacher that combines semantically similar queries to improve the relevance in image retrieval.

Design/methodology/approach

Initially the image retrieval capabilities (based on the number of items retrieved and their relevance) of search engines in Greek queries is studied with a number of semantically similar queries which differ in morphology. Then a system that produces semantically similar queries and merges their results is presented and the increase in relevance is measured. For the purpose of this paper, a number of queries suggested by a few students are run through the presented metasearcher and directly in the search engines. The participants of the evaluation study measured the precision in both cases.

Findings

The initial evaluation revealed that search engines retrieve different results in queries that differ in morphology or in grammar but still express exactly the same information need. Omission of diacritics affects the retrieval negatively as well. The study showed that the number of relevant images increases by combining the results of queries that differ in morphology.

Originality/value

The findings of this study could be applicable to other complex non‐Latin languages based, for example, on the Cyrillic alphabet. The presented metasearcher is a framework on how to expand the image retrieval capabilities of existing search engines. Its modular nature allows the straightforward integration of other techniques that are tailored to the characteristics of specific natural languages.

Details

Program, vol. 42 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0033-0337

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 May 2017

Christiane Behnert and Dirk Lewandowski

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to apply traditional information retrieval (IR) evaluation methods based on standards from the Text REtrieval Conference and web…

2024

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to apply traditional information retrieval (IR) evaluation methods based on standards from the Text REtrieval Conference and web search evaluation to all types of modern library information systems (LISs) including online public access catalogues, discovery systems, and digital libraries that provide web search features to gather information from heterogeneous sources.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors apply conventional procedures from IR evaluation to the LIS context considering the specific characteristics of modern library materials.

Findings

The authors introduce a framework consisting of five parts: search queries, search results, assessors, testing, and data analysis. The authors show how to deal with comparability problems resulting from diverse document types, e.g., electronic articles vs printed monographs and what issues need to be considered for retrieval tests in the library context.

Practical implications

The framework can be used as a guideline for conducting retrieval effectiveness studies in the library context.

Originality/value

Although a considerable amount of research has been done on IR evaluation, and standards for conducting retrieval effectiveness studies do exist, to the authors’ knowledge this is the first attempt to provide a systematic framework for evaluating the retrieval effectiveness of twenty-first-century LISs. The authors demonstrate which issues must be considered and what decisions must be made by researchers prior to a retrieval test.

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