Automatic identification of user goals in Web search

There have been recent interests in studying the "goal" behind a user's Web query, so that this goal can be used to improve the quality of a search engine's results. Previous studies have mainly focused on using manual query-log investigation to identify Web query goals. In this paper we study whether and how we can automate this goal-identification process. We first present our results from a human subject study that strongly indicate the feasibility of automatic query-goal identification. We then propose two types of features for the goal-identification task: user-click behavior and anchor-link distribution. Our experimental evaluation shows that by combining these features we can correctly identify the goals for 90% of the queries studied. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search and Retrieval--search process; H.4.m [Information Systems Applications]: Miscellaneous General Terms Measurement, Experimentation...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: WWW
• Authors: Uichin Lee, Zhenyu Liu, Junghoo Cho
• Keywords: Human Subject Study, Internet Technology, Keywords Web Search, Web Query Goals, WWW 2005