A temporal comparison of AltaVista Web searching: Research Articles

  • Authors:

  • Bernard J. Jansen;Amanda Spink;Jan Pedersen

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Information Sciences and Technology, Pennsylvania State University, 329F Thomas Building, University Park, PA 16802;School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, 610 IS Building, 135 N. Bellefield Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260;Overture Web Search Division, 1070 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Major Web search engines, such as AltaVista, are essential tools in the quest to locate online information. This article reports research that used transaction log analysis to examine the characteristics and changes in AltaVista Web searching that occurred from 1998 to 2002. The research questions we examined are (1) What are the changes in AltaVista Web searching from 1998 to 2002? (2) What are the current characteristics of AltaVista searching, including the duration and frequency of search sessions? (3) What changes in the information needs of AltaVista users occurred between 1998 and 2002? The results of our research show (1) a move toward more interactivity with increases in session and query length, (2) with 70% of session durations at 5 minutes or less, the frequency of interaction is increasing, but it is happening very quickly, and (3) a broadening range of Web searchers' information needs, with the most frequent terms accounting for less than 1% of total term usage. We discuss the implications of these findings for the development of Web search engines. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.