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A Taxonomy of Web Searches

Analyze the taxonomy of web searches, present statistical data, and explore the evolution of search engines based on navigational, informational, and transactional intents. Understand the importance for successful web search development and the challenges faced by current search engines. Learn how third-generation engines aim to solve these issues.

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A Taxonomy of Web Searches

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  1. A Taxonomy of Web Searches Andrei Broder, SIGIR Forum, 2002 Ahmet Yenicag Ceyhun Karbeyaz

  2. Abstract • Classic IR is inherently predicated on users search for their information need, that leads them to use an IR system. • But the need behind a web search is not only informational. • Navigational • Transactional In this paper: • Analyze the taxonomy of web searches • Present some statistics about this taxonomy • Show evolution of search engines in light of this taxonomy. CS 533, Information Retrieval, Karbeyaz & Yenicag

  3. Taxonomy of Web Searches Classify web queries according to their intent: • Navigational: Give me the URL of the site I want to reach. • Bilkent => www.bilkent.edu.tr • Informational: Find information assumed to be available on the web and no further interaction is predicted except reading. • Closest to classical IR • What is IR? => IR is … • Transactional: Show me sites where I can perform a certain transaction. • Shopping, downloading media files (mp3, video) CS 533, Information Retrieval, Karbeyaz & Yenicag

  4. Statistics • Prevalence of queries are determined by two methods: • User survey • AltaVista query log analysis CS 533, Information Retrieval, Karbeyaz & Yenicag

  5. Statistics (continued) User survey: • Self selection • Most of the queries are non-navigational • Hard to distinguish between transactional and informational queries • Queries that are neither transactional, nor navigational are assumed to be informational • Estimation: Transactional queries are around 36% CS 533, Information Retrieval, Karbeyaz & Yenicag

  6. Statistics (continued) Log analysis: • AltaVista log is analyzed for 1000 random queries. Only English queries are taken into consideration: 400 queries Figure 4. Query Classification CS 533, Information Retrieval, Karbeyaz & Yenicag

  7. Evolution of Search Engines Three stages: • First generation: uses mostly on-page data and very close to classic IR. (informational) AltaVista • Second generation: uses off-page, web specific data such as link analysis. (informational and navigational) Google • Third generation: Recently emerging, attempts to blend data from multiple sources to answer “the need behind the query”. (informational, transactional and navigational) • Ankara => direct links to a hotel reservation page for Ankara CS 533, Information Retrieval, Karbeyaz & Yenicag

  8. Conclusion • The need behind a query might be: informational, navigational or transactional. • Search engines need to deal with all of them. • Understanding taxonomy is important for successful web search development. • Current engines lack of supporting transactional queries directly. • Third generation engines will solve this problem mostly via semantic analyses (understanding what the query is about). CS 533, Information Retrieval, Karbeyaz & Yenicag

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