University Park, Pa. --- A just-published survey of Web search engine users shows that many of us lack the motivation to use sophisticated search strategies, resist learning the complex systems and rules, and expect Web search engines to create effective searches automatically. As a result, we often conduct repetitive, fruitless searches on the same topic -- but, hey, it's not our fault.
Dr. Amanda Spink, Penn State associate professor of information science and technology, says, "When the design for digital libraries, information retrieval systems and various search engines are driven by technological criteria and algorithms, they are found lacking in many respects when encountered, used and evaluated by users."
In other words, those high-powered features on Web search engines were created by geeks for geeks. It's no wonder that the rest of us just try the same old simple strategies over and over again, hoping some useful information will turn up.
Spink is principal author of the survey report published in the latest issue of the journal Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy. The report, "Searching Heterogeneous Collections on the Web: A Survey of EXCITE Users," was co-authored by Dr. Judy Bateman, Catholic University of America, and Major Bernard J. Jansen of the United States Military Academy.
Spink joined the Penn State School of Information Science and Technology faculty this summer and was a faculty member at the School of Library and Information Sciences of the University of North Texas when the survey was done.
While the survey was conducted with EXCITE users in 1997, Spink says, "The problems we found are probably generalizable to other Web search engines in use today."
The survey respondents answered 18 questions developed by the researchers in conjunction with the EXCITE staff. The interactive survey was made available through EXCITE's home page for 5 days, Friday April 11 to Tuesday April 15, 1997. Usable data were received from 316 respondents.
Many search engine users who answered the survey said they didn't intend to use many search terms or employ complex search strategies. Nor were they planning to use Boolean operators, the "AND," "OR" and "AND NOT" that can help narrow down a search. User search log studies support this low use of these powerful search tools with about 5 percent of queries containing Boolean operators. The respondents also spurned query modifiers such as parentheses, quotation marks or other symbols necessary to identify and categorize search terms.
Typically, searches are short and simple. However, the researchers found that the majority does more than 1 or 2 searches on the same topic over time.
The researchers wrote "One can also speculate that the sheer magnitude of any retrieval in response to a few search terms may cause users to quickly peruse the results, logoff, possibly rethink or search another information resource and then have another go on EXCITE."
They suggest that users need web tools to help them save and later modify their searches for reuse on the same or different search engine. In addition, since searching tasks are not clear to many users, search term and strategy selection tools might also help. They suggest that preprocessing user queries to check for the correct query modifiers, spelling and syntax would help, as may interactive tutorials to help users learn to search effectively.
Survey respondents ranged from less than 10 years old to over 60, with the majority between 20 and 50. Most were U.S. residents and either high school or college graduates. Students and professionals formed the largest group of respondents, followed by executives and the self-employed. The largest group was searching from their home computer, typically an IBM-PC. Commercial and educational users formed the next numerous groups of searchers.
Respondent's search topics were dispersed broadly over 16 categories: individual or family information, computers, medical, education, business, science, politics and government information, shopping and price information, hobbies, graphic images, general information, entertainment news, travel, job seeking, and the arts and humanities.
EDITORS: Dr. Spink is at 814-865-4454 or at ahs4@psu.edu by email.