Search results

Introduces several new versions of PageRank (the link based Web page ranking algorithm), based on an information science perspective on the concept of the Web document. Although the Web page is the typical indivisible unit of information in search engine results and most Web information retrieval algorithms, other research has suggested that aggregating pages based on directories and domains gives promising alternatives, particularly when Web links are the object of study. The new algorithms introduced based on these alternatives were used to rank four sets of Web pages. The ranking results were compared with human subjects’ rankings. The results of the tests were somewhat inconclusive: the new approach worked well for the set that includes pages from different Web sites; however, it does not work well in ranking pages that are from the same site. It seems that the new algorithms may be effective for some tasks but not for others, especially when only low numbers of links are involved or the pages to be ranked are from the same site or directory.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss ranking factors suitable for library materials and to show that ranking in general is a complex process and that ranking for library materials requires a variety of techniques.

The relevant literature is reviewed to provide a systematic overview of suitable ranking factors. The discussion is based on an overview of ranking factors used in web search engines.

While there are a wide variety of ranking factors applicable to library materials, today's library systems use only some of them. When designing a ranking component for the library catalogue, an individual weighting of applicable factors is necessary.

While the paper discusses different factors, no particular ranking formula is given. However, the paper presents the argument that such a formula must always be individual to a certain use case.

The factors presented can be considered when designing a ranking component for a library's search system or when discussing such a project with an ILS vendor.

The paper is original in that it is the first to systematically discuss ranking of library materials based on the main factors used by web search engines.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most popular techniques used to rank a web page highly in Google.

The paper presents the results of a study into 50 highly optimized web pages that were created as part of a Search Engine Optimization competition. The study focuses on the most popular techniques that were used to rank highest in this competition, and includes an analysis on the use of PageRank, number of pages, number of in‐links, domain age and the use of third party sites such as directories and social bookmarking sites. A separate study was made into 50 non‐optimized web pages for comparison.

The paper provides insight into the techniques that successful Search Engine Optimizers use to ensure a page ranks highly in Google. Recognizes the importance of PageRank and links as well as directories and social bookmarking sites.

Only the top 50 web sites for a specific query were analyzed. Analysing more web sites and comparing with similar studies in different competition would provide more concrete results.

The paper offers a revealing insight into the techniques used by industry experts to rank highly in Google, and the success or otherwise of those techniques.

This paper fulfils an identified need for web sites and e‐commerce sites keen to attract a wider web audience.

The purpose of this paper is to statistically explore the relationship between web usability and web presence of the universities. As a case study, five Turkish universities in different rankings which were selected from Webometrics rankings were evaluated and compared.

Two different methods were employed for performing usability evaluation of the selected universities: a user testing was used to measure the user performance on the selected tasks and a questionnaire to assess the user satisfaction on the website use. Both usability evaluation methods were applied on the pre-determined tasks for each university by participation of 20 subjects. After the usability evaluation, the universities were ranked in terms of usability results and finally, the relationship between web usability and web presence of universities was statistically investigated by using Kendall’s rank correlation.

Several common usability problems which were asserted by related previous studies were identified at the end of usability evaluation of university websites. The usability results also revealed that selected Turkish university websites suffer from numerous usability problems. Further, a strong positive correlation (p < 0.05) between the usability of the university websites and their web presences were identified. Hence, the participants showed a higher success and satisfaction while performing the tasks on the university websites which have strong web presences.

The findings from this study have practical implications for universities. Correlation results showed that universities can improve their web usability by giving importance to their web presence volumes. Universities can estimate their web usability levels by investigating their web presence rankings and they can also raise their rankings in Webometrics ranking system by improving the usability of their websites. Moreover, university web developers can design more usable and more user-friendly websites by avoiding usability and design problems identified through usability evaluation.

Different from the prior research efforts focussing on usability of educational web pages, this study contributes to the growing literature by statistically exploring the relationship between web presence and web usability of universities. This study is also precious from the point of view that it is one of the first attempts to evaluate and compare usability levels of a set of universities’ websites from Turkey.

A fundamental internet marketing challenge is that consumers can quickly move from seeks to one web site to another if they cannot easily find what they want on a given web site. This paper address the web site navigational design issues associated with internet marketing.

A two‐year participant observation study in a UK tourism marketing organisation is provided in order to demonstrate a web site design approach in action.

Existing web site design approaches such as hierarchy charts and storyboards can assist in structuring web site content but do not necessarily cater well for making web sites straightforward to use by consumers. Human computer interface web site design approaches typically relate more to style, appearance and functionality than to structuring web site content. Web site content ranking and grouping can allow straightforward access to web site content, by making frequently required content the most accessible and by grouping related content for ease of identification. From a web site marketing perspective, the more accessible web site content relating to products and services offered, the more likely that such products and services will be purchased by the consumer.

If consumers are to use a web site and use it again in the future they need to be able to find what they require in a straightforward manner. Ranking web site content to present frequently required content earlier in the web site, and grouping web site content so that similar content appears on the same web page or on closely linked web pages can make a web site more straightforward to navigate. In a marketing context, the more accessible a web site, the more likelihood there is of repeat business from the consumer.

The originality of the research reported in this paper concerns the use of web site content ranking and grouping to design web sites that can enable straightforward access to information and transactions by consumers, and thus potentially increase both current sales and future repeat business.

The aim of the study reported in this paper is to evaluate 71 library association web sites using 15 selected Webometric criteria.

The study uses Webometric analysis and ranking based on a scaling method and comparative means analysis (One Way ANOVA), and homogeneous subsets using criteria from SPSS₁₃ and Excel₂₀₀₇.

The majority of library association web sites have “contact us” links, but few have Frequently Answered Questions (FAQ) links. Library association web sites are categorised into three groups: high, medium and low, with significant differences between and within the three groups. A combination of criteria scores and classified groups shows that among the 15 criteria, only four criteria have no significant difference between the three groups and the classified groups are heterogeneous based on 11 criteria.

Only 71 library association web sites were analysed is this study.

The paper provides a three category classification for library associations web sites.

To investigate how search engine users manipulate the rankings of search results. Search engines employ different ranking methods in order to display the “best” results first. One of the ranking methods is PageRank, where the number of links pointing to the page influences its rank. The “anchor text,” the clickable text of the hypertext link is another “ingredient” in the ranking method. There are a number of cases where the public challenged the Google's ranking, by creating a so‐called “Google bomb” – creating links to pages they wanted to be highly ranked for given query. Google is chosen as the search engine, because it is currently by far the most popular search engine.

PageRank, one of the major parameters of Google's ranking algorithm is described, and the author explains how this algorithm is exploited by communities of users to promote a certain web page for a specific query. This process is called “Google bombing.” Recent reaction of Google to this phenomenon is also described.

Specific examples of “accomplished Google bombs” show that the public is able to manipulate search results.

Google, instead of being an unobtrusive information retrieval tool has become highly influential in the web scenery. Some users pay for search engine optimization, while others utilize the power of the crowd to influence Google's rankings. This paper supports the claims of Introna and Nissenbaum regarding the power of search engines.

The objective of this paper is to characterize the changes in the rankings of the top ten results of major search engines over time and to compare the rankings between these engines.

The papers compare rankings of the top‐ten results of the search engines Google and AlltheWeb on ten identical queries over a period of three weeks. Only the top‐ten results were considered, since users do not normally inspect more than the first results page returned by a search engine. The experiment was repeated twice, in October 2003 and in January 2004, in order to assess changes to the top‐ten results of some of the queries during the three months interval. In order to assess the changes in the rankings, three measures were computed for each data collection point and each search engine.

The findings in this paper show that the rankings of AlltheWeb were highly stable over each period, while the rankings of Google underwent constant yet minor changes, with occasional major ones. Changes over time can be explained by the dynamic nature of the web or by fluctuations in the search engines' indexes. The top‐ten results of the two search engines had surprisingly low overlap. With such small overlap, the task of comparing the rankings of the two engines becomes extremely challenging.

The paper shows that because of the abundance of information on the web, ranking search results is of extreme importance. The paper compares several measures for computing the similarity between rankings of search tools, and shows that none of the measures is fully satisfactory as a standalone measure. It also demonstrates the apparent differences in the ranking algorithms of two widely used search engines.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate Google search engine’s ranking function from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective.

The paper proposed an estimation function that defines the query match score of a search result as the weighted sum of scores from a limited set of factors. The search results for a query are re-ranked according to the query match scores. The effectiveness was measured by comparing the new ranks with the original ranks of search results.

The proposed method achieved the best SEO effectiveness when using the top 20 search results for a query. The empirical results reveal that PageRank (PR) is the dominant factor in Google ranking function. The title follows as the second most important, and the snippet and the URL have roughly equal importance with variations among queries.

This study considered a limited set of ranking factors. The empirical results reveal that SEO effectiveness can be assessed by a simple estimation of ranking function even when the ranks of the new and original result sets are quite dissimilar.

The findings indicate that web marketers should pay particular attention to a webpage’s PR, and then place the keyword in URL, the page title, and snippet.

There have been ongoing concerns about how to formulate a simple strategy that can help a website get ranked higher in search engines. This study provides web marketers much needed empirical evidence about a simple way to foresee the ranking success of an SEO effort.

This chapter outlines how search engine technology can be used in online public access catalogs (OPACs) to help improve users’ experiences, to identify users’ intentions, and to indicate how it can be applied in the library context, along with how sophisticated ranking criteria can be applied to the online library catalog. A review of the literature and the current OPAC developments forms the basis of recommendations on how to improve OPACs. Findings were that the major shortcomings of current OPACs are that they are not sufficiently user-centered and that their results presentations lack sophistication. Furthermore, these shortcomings are not addressed in current 2.0 developments. It is argued that OPAC development should be made search-centered before additional features are applied. Although the recommendations on ranking functionality and the use of user intentions are only conceptual and not yet applied to a library catalogue, practitioners will find recommendations for developing better OPACs in this chapter. In short, readers will find a systematic view on how the search engines’ strengths can be applied to improving libraries’ online catalogs.