Selected results from a large study of Web searching: the Excite study

Abstract

This paper reports selected findings from an ongoing series of studies analyzing large-scale data sets containing queries posed by Excite users, a major Internet search service. The findings presented report on: (1) queries length and frequency, (2) Boolean queries, (3) query reformulation, (4) phrase searching, (5) search term distribution, (6) relevance feedback, (7) viewing pages of results, (8) successive searching, (9) sexually-related searching, (10) image queries and (11) multi-lingual aspects. Further research is discussed.

Keywords

• large-scale data sets
• queries
• Excite
• users
• search service
• query length
• query frequency
• Boolean queries
• query reformulation
• phrase searching
• search term distribution
• relevance feedback
• successive searching
• sex-related searching
• image queries
• multi-lingual aspects