30,000 hits may be better than 300: precision anomalies in internet searches

  • Authors:

  • Caroline M. Eastman

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Results of searches using a variety of query formulations with several Internet search engines show that strategies intended to give narrower and more precise results may not give improvements in precision even though they result in fewer hits. Searches were performed by students in graduate information retrieval courses using different formulations for the same topic.