An Analysis of Web Documents Retrieved and Viewed

The placement of Websites in ranked retrieval and the viewing patterns of Web search engine users is a crucial issue for Web site owners and Web search engines. However, little largescale research has examined the viewing patterns of users of commercial Web search engines. The research results reported here address three questions, which are: (1) How many pages of results do Web search engine users’ examine? (2) How many Web documents do Web search engine users’ view when searching the Web?, and (3) How relevant are the Web documents that they are viewing? We present findings from large-scale research into the page viewing patterns of users of the FAST commercial Web search engine. Using data samples representing thousands of users, we examine common patterns concerning the number of pages of results viewed, the number of pages viewed and the relationship between the number of queries, the number of actual Web sites visited, and time between multiple site visits. The implications ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: IC
• Authors: Bernard J. Jansen, Amanda Spink
• Keywords: IC 2003, IC 2007, Search Engine Users, Viewing Patterns, Web Search Engines