Search Results

1
Search Results
LIS 385T Information Architecture and Design

• By Roger C. Wei
• 10/22/2002

2
History of e-Info Searching

• 1960s Electronically searched info on computer.
• 1971 End-user search system was introduced.
• 1985 First commercial CD-ROM appeared.
• 1991 Emergence of the World Wide Web.
• 1992 Gopher was fully functional.
• 1994 Emergence of first Web search engine
  (WebCrawler).

3
What is Search Results

• Search results refer to presentation of content
  that matches the users search query (Rosenfeld
  Morville, 2002).
  
• Consist of individual hits.

4
Search Tools on the Web

• About 85 of web users surveyed use search
  engines to find specific information.
  
• Results of a web search depend on the selected
  search engine.

5
Searching and Ranking Process

• (1) match the search words
• (2) process the search syntax
• (3) construct a set of documents
• (4) assign a weight
• (5) use the assigned weights to rank
• (6) display the search results

6
Relevance

• An abstract measure of how well a document
  satisfy the users info need.
  
• A subjective notion and difficult to quantify.

7
Factors of Ranking (1/2)

• Popularity of the page
• Frequency of terms
• Number of query terms matched
• Rarity of terms
• Weighting by field
• Proximity of terms
• Word variants

8
Factors of Ranking (2/2)

• Weighting according to the order where the
  searcher entered terms
  
• Case-sensitivity
• Analysis of documents in the database
• Relevance feedback applied to retrieved records
• Date

9
What re-ranking search results are
User
User Interface
Database Selector
Doc Selector
Result Merger
Query Dispatcher
Search Engine
Search Engine
Search Engine
10
Measure of IR tool Effectiveness

• Recall
• the number of retrieved relevant documents
• the number of relevant documents
• Precision
• the number of retrieved relevant documents
• the number of retrieved documents

11
Recall vs. Precision
Recall
Precision
12
Search Evaluation

• Must be examined in pairs.
• Two Issues
• Not easy to define relevancy
• Difficult to know the of relevant doc that have
  not been retrieved.
  

13
Survey of Existing Engines (1/2)

• Major Search Engines Google, Teoma,
  AllTheWeb.com (FAST), Yahoo, MSN Search, Lycos,
  Ask Jeeves, AOL Search, WiseNut, Inktomi,
  LookSmart, Open Directory, Overture, AltaVista,
  HotBot, Netscape Search.
• News Search Engines AltaVista News
• Specialty Search Engines Ask Jeeves
• Kids Search Engines AOL Kids Only

14
Survey of Existing Engines (2/2)

• Metacrawlers Dogpile, Metacrawler, Cnet Search,
  Search.com, ProFusion, Mamma, Ixquick.
  
• Multimedia Search Engines MP3.com.
• Regional Search Engines Mosaique.
• Paid Listings Search Engines Overture.
• Search Utilities Copernic.

15
Search Results Info Architecture

• -IA, organization info to reach info needs.
• IA provides more considerations for the way
  engines display results.
  
• IA indirectly increase users satisfaction in
  info needs, when IR dont have a major
  breakthrough.

16
Interface Design at the Search results page
Farkas (2002)

• Display a number indicating the total number of
  results.
  
• Provide a query form on the results page.
• Offer some tips on searching if no results.
• Hits must provide sufficient information.

17
Interface Design at the Search results page Van
Duyne (2002)

• Provide relevant summaries
• Offer clear organization
• Provide good hyperlinked titles for each hit
• Use log files to tailor results for the most
  common search terms
  
• Compensate for common misspellings
• Provide support for common search tasks

18
Interface Design at the Search results page
Rosenfeld (2002)

• -variables to consider
• The level of searching expertise users have.
• The type of results users want.
• The type of information being searched.
• The amount of information being searched.

19
Search Results Interface

• Google vs. Hotbot.

20

• References
• Baeza-Yates, R. Ribeiro-Neto, B. (1999) Modern
  Information Retrieval. Addison-Wesley, Reading,
  MA, USA.
  
• Chowdhury, A. Soboroff, I. (2002) Automatic
  Evaluation of World Wide Web Search Services,
  Proceeding of the twenty-fifth annual
  international conference on research and
  development in information retrieval, August
  11-15, 2002, 421-422, Tampere, Finland.
• Chowdhury G. G. Chowdhury S. (2001) information
  sources and searching on the world wide web.
  Library Association Publishing. London, UK.
  
• Farkas, D. K., Farkas J. B. (2002) Principles
  of Web Design. Pearson Education, Inc.
  
• Glossbrenner, A. Glossbrenner, E. (1999) Search
  engines for the world wide web, 2nd edn, Peachpit
  Press.
  
• Google How to Interpret your Search Results
  (2002). Retrieved October 18, 2002, from
  http//www.google.com/help/interpret.html.
  
• Hagedorn, K. (2000) Information Architecture
  Glossary. Retrieved October 18, 2002, from
  http//argus-acia.com/
  
• Henninger, M. (1999) Dont Just Surf effective
  reserch strategies for the Net, 2nd Edition,
  Univeristy of New South Wales Press, Australia.
  
• Hock, R. E. (2001) The extreme searchers guide
  to web search engines a handbook for the serious
  searcher, 2nd Edition. CyberAge Books,
  Information Today, Inc. New Jersey, USA.

21

• Jansen, B. J. 2000. An investigation into the use
  of simple queries on Web IR systems. Information
  Research An Electronic Journal. 6(1).
  
• Kobayashi, M. Takeda, K. (2000) Information
  Retrieval on the Web. ACM Computing Surveys,
  32(2), June 2000, 144-174.
  
• Meng, W., Yu, C. Liu K. (2002) Building
  Efficient and Effective Metasearch Engines. ACM
  Computing Surveys, 34(1), March 2002, 4889.
  
• Morville, P., Rosenfeld, L. B. Janes, J. (1999)
  The Internet searchers handbook locating
  information, people, and software. 2nd Edition.
  Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. NY, USA.
• Poulter, A., Tseng, G. Sargent, G. (1999) The
  Library and Information Professionals Guide to
  the World Wide Web, Library Association
  Publishing.
• Rosenfeld, L. Morville P. (2002). Information
  Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition.
  OReilly, Sebastopol, CA, USA.
  
• Search Terms Glossary (1998). Retrieved October
  20, 2002, from http//www.searchtools.com/info/gl
  ossary.html.
  
• Sullivan, D. (2002) Search Engine Watch.
  Retrieved October 10, 2002, from
  http//searchenginewatch.com/. Van Duyne, D. K.,
  Landay, J. A. Hong, J. I. (2002) The Desing of
  Sites patterns, principles, and processes for
  crafting a customer-centered Web experience.
  Addison-Wesley.
• Weiss, S. (1997) Glossary for Information
  Retrieval. Retrieved October 10, 2002, from
  http//www.cs.jhu.edu/7Eweiss/glossary.html.
  
• Yang, R. (1998) Relationship between Precision
  and Recall ratios and other evaluation methods.
  Retrieved July 10, 1999, from http//www.staff.ui
  uc.edu/pare/rong.html.