A study of the usefulness of institutions' acronyms as web queries

  • Authors:

  • Sándor Dominich;Júlia Góth;Adrienn Skrop

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Veszprém, Veszprém, Hungary, Egyetem;Department of Computer Science, University of Veszprém, Veszprém, Hungary, Egyetem;Department of Computer Science, University of Veszprém, Veszprém, Hungary, Egyetem

  • Venue:
  • ECIR'03 Proceedings of the 25th European conference on IR research
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Many people in Hungary use the Web to obtain information from public institutions and organizations. Because these users typically do not know the URL of the desired institution's home page, they use a Web search engine to get there. Institutions' names are usually difficult to recall exactly, thus they are not being used as queries in search engines. Instead, the acronyms of institutions are being used: they are easy to remember and are extensively used in media and by people in everyday life. The paper is concerned with studying the usefulness of the acronyms of Hungarian institutions and organisations present on the Web. The study shows that the majority of acronyms lack this ability. Causes are presented, and possible remedies are suggested. Because the method used in the paper is language independent, it can be used to carry out a similar study in another country too.