Effectiveness of Keyword-Based Display and Selection of Retrieval Results for Interactive Searches

Abstract. We present an approach to increasing the effectiveness of rankedoutput retrieval systems that relies on graphical display and user manipulation of “views” of retrieval results, where a view is the subset of retrieved documents that contain a specified subset of query terms. This approach has been implemented in a system named VIEWER (VIEwing WEb Results), acting as an interface to available search engines. An experimental evaluation of the performance of VIEWER in contrast to AltaVista is the major focus of the paper. We first report the results of an experiment on single, short query searches where VIEWER, used as an interactive ranking system, markedly outperformed AltaVista. We then concentrate on a more realistic searching scenario, involving free query formulation, unconstrained selection of retrieval results, and possibility of query reformulation. We report the results of an experiment where the use of VIEWER, compared to AltaVista, seemed to shift the user effort ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ERCIMDL
• Authors: Ezio Berenci, Claudio Carpineto, Vittorio Giannini, Stefano Mizzaro
• Keywords: Education, ERCIMDL 1999, Rankedoutput Retrieval Systems, Short Query Searches, VIEWER