Search results

Purpose — To provide a theoretical background to understand current local search engines as an aspect of specialized search, and understand the data sources and used technologies.

Design/methodology/approach — Selected local search engines are examined and compared toward their use of geographic information retrieval (GIR) technologies, data sources, available entity information, processing, and interfaces. An introduction to the field of GIR is given and its use in the selected systems is discussed.

Findings — All selected commercial local search engines utilize GIR technology in varying degrees for information preparation and presentation. It is also starting to be used in regular Web search. However, major differences can be found between the different search engines.

Research limitations/implications — This study is not exhaustive and only uses informal comparisons without definitive ranking. Due to the unavailability of hard data, informed guesses were made based on available public interfaces and literature.

Practical implications — A source of background information for understanding the results of local search engines, their provenance, and their potential.

Originality/value — An overview of GIR technology in the context of commercial search engines integrates research efforts and commercial systems and helps to understand both sides better.

Purpose — Since a couple of years, we are confronted with the phenomenon of information overload. In particular, the web provides a rich source of a variety of information mainly in textual, i.e. unstructured form. Thus, web search faces new challenges that are how to make the user aware of the variety of content available and how to satisfy users best with such manifold content.

Methodology — This variety of content is considered as diversity, i.e. the reflection of a result set's coverage of multiple interpretations of a query. Diversification within web search aims on the one hand at adapting the ranking in a way that the top results are diverse. Increasingly important becomes on the other hand the organization and classification of content within diversification.

Findings — Various approaches to diversification are available or currently focus on research activities. They range from an adapted ranking by means of similarity measures or diversity scores to a comprehensive diversity analysis which determines topics and classifies text according to opinions etc.

Implications — Given the high diversity of web content, approaches for diversification are extremely important. Web search tries to address this problem from different perspectives. For the future, combination with image search result diversification is important. Further, benchmarks and standard data sets for evaluations need to be established to ensure comparability of results from various approaches.

Originality/value — This chapter provides an overview on diversity in web search from two directions: (a) Diversity is introduced with its notions and dimensions. (b) Methods to assess diversity within web search are presented.

Purpose — To provide an overview of recent research that examined how search engine users evaluate and select Web search results and how alternative search engine interfaces can support Web users' credibility assessment of Web search results.

Design/methodology/approach — As theoretical background, Information Foraging Theory (Pirolli, 2007; Pirolli & Card, 1999) from cognitive science and Prominence-Interpretation-Theory (Fogg, 2003) from communication and persuasion research are presented. Furthermore, a range of recent empirical research that investigated the effects of alternative SERP layouts on searchers' information quality or credibility assessments of search results are reviewed and approaches that aim at automatically classifying search results according to specific genre categories are reported.

Findings — The chapter reports on findings that Web users often rely heavily on the ranking provided by the search engines without paying much attention to the reliability or trustworthiness of the Web pages. Furthermore, the chapter outlines how alternative search engine interfaces that display search results in a format different from a list and/or provide prominent quality-related cues in the SERPs can foster searchers' credibility evaluations.

Research limitations/implications — The reported empirical studies, search engine interfaces, and Web page classification systems are not an exhaustive list.

Originality/value — The chapter provides insights for researchers, search engine developers, educators, and students on how the development and use of alternative search engine interfaces might affect Web users' search and evaluation strategies during Web search as well as their search outcomes in terms of retrieving high-quality, credible information.

Purpose: Many Internet users search for health information but they struggle with assessing the quality of the information they find. By drawing on a multi-modal approach to data collection, this study aims to understand further the nuanced cognitive processes that people utilize as they acquire and evaluate online health information.

Design: We used a mixed-methods approach that includes surveys, interviews, and observations of 76 diverse adults of all ages in the Chicago area completing various health information-seeking tasks.

Findings: Most participants begin their information-seeking process on search engines. We identified the most popular credibility-assessment strategies used on the search engine results’ pages (SERP) as well as on websites. We also explored how the process of executing such strategies reveals greater and lesser savvy among users.

Research Limitations: While the sample size and methods limit its generalizability, this study included a larger and more diverse group of participants than most observational work, which results in data about a wider range of behaviors than is typical of such research.

Social Implications: Our findings showed that most of our participants could use additional education regarding credibility assessment of online health information. Additionally, since a great deal of credibility assessment occurs on SERP, search companies bear a particular responsibility for ensuring the quality of the information their results highlight.

In recent years, aceted search has been a well-accepted approach for many academic libraries across the United States. This chapter is based on the author’s dissertation and work of many years on faceted library catalogs. Not to hope to be exhaustive, the author’s aim is to provide sufficient depth and breadth to offer a useful resource to researchers, librarians, and practitioners about faceted search used in library catalogs.

The chapter reviews different aspects of faceted search used in academic libraries, from the theory, the history, to the implementation. It starts with the history of online public access catalogs (OPACs) and how people search with OPACs. Then it introduces the classic facet theory and its relationship with faceted search. At last, various academic research projects on faceted search, especially faceted library catalogs, are briefly reviewed. These projects include both implementation studies and the evaluation studies.

The results indicate that most searchers were able to understand the concept of facets naturally and easily. Compared to text searches, however, faceted searches were complementary and supplemental, and used only by a small group of searchers.

The author hopes that the facet feature has not only been cosmetic but the answer to the call for the next generation catalog for academic libraries. The results of this research are intended to inform librarians and library information technology (IT) staff to improve the effectiveness of the catalogs to help people find information they need more efficiently.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.

Purpose — To develop methodologies to evaluate search engines according to an individual's preference in an easy and reliable manner, and to formulate user-oriented metrics to compare freshness and duplication in search results.

Design/methodology/approach — A personalised evaluation model for comparing search engines is designed as a hierarchy of weighted parameters. These commonly found search engine features and performance measures are given quantitative and qualitative ratings by an individual user. Furthermore, three performance measurement metrics are formulated and presented as histograms for visual inspection. A methodology is introduced to quantitatively compare and recognise the different histogram patterns within the context of search engine performance.

Findings — Precision and recall are the fundamental measures used in many search engine evaluations due to their simplicity, fairness and reliability. Most recent evaluation models are user oriented and focus on relevance issues. Identifiable statistical patterns are found in performance measures of search engines.

Research limitations/implications — The specific parameters used in the evaluation model could be further refined. A larger scale user study would confirm the validity and usefulness of the model. The three performance measures presented give a reasonably informative overview of the characteristics of a search engine. However, additional performance parameters and their resulting statistical patterns would make the methodology more valuable to the users.

Practical implications — The easy-to-use personalised search engine evaluation model can be tailored to an individual's preference and needs simply by changing the weights and modifying the features considered. A user is able to get an idea of the characteristics of a search engine quickly using the quantitative measure of histogram patterns that represent the search performance metrics introduced.

Originality/value — The presented work is considered original as one of the first search engine evaluation models that can be personalised. This enables a Web searcher to choose an appropriate search engine for his/her needs and hence finding the right information in the shortest time with the least effort.

This study uses an eye-tracking device to examine the effects of dissenting opinion on information search style and decision quality, using insights from dual-process theory. When evaluating strategic outcomes, managers not exposed to a dissenting opinion employ directed information search using System 1 (heuristic, automatic cognitive processing), leading to low-quality decisions. Providing a dissenting opinion causes managers to use System 2 (sequential information search characterized by deliberate, slow, and effortful cognitive processing), leading to higher-quality decisions. This study provides useful insights into the cognitive processes underlying managers' judgments, and the factors that influence their decisions. We conclude by discussing the critical role of dissent in business practices, and explain how dissent affects people's System 2 cognitive processes.