Search Engine Web Use: A Case Study
Search engines are the predominate way of finding information on the Web. As the Web grows, it is important to understand the ways in which users interact with Web. This article examines search characteristics and trends of European users.
The authors set out to answer 3 basic questions.
1. What are the trends in Web searching characteristics?
2. How many Web documents do search engine users' view and how long do they view them?
3. How relevant are the Web documents they are viewing?
Results show that the average user inputs 2.6 words per query. Also, the mean amount of searches per session is 2.3. An interesting find is that the average user only views 1.7 pages per search. 52% of searchers spend less than fifteen minutes conducting their search. With all of the data that is on the web, users don't like doing long searches. From a business standpoint, it is important that your website is easy to find in search engines because users do not readily look around.
This article is important because it is one of the first to focus entirely on European users. The Web has spawned global e-commerce, an important tool for promoting and selling products worldwide. My project covered the total cost of setting up a business website. One component of that process is registering with different search engines so that your page shows up. The cost of registering is high at around $300 per search engine. However, this is a necessary cost because, as shown in the article, users don't tend to look beyond their first couple of searches.
MIS 352 has stressed the importance of the digital age. As readership of newspapers and magazines decline, people have turned to the web as their primary source of information. Understanding how users search gives website developers a better grasp on how to effectively promote their site with search engines.
I would recommend this article to anyone who plans on creating a new website. While it does not give information on what formats work best, it would fit in very well with a larger study looking at how people use the Web. Developing a business website is an expensive undertaking and it is important to maximize the revenue and awareness generated by this new form of promotion.
Journal of Information Processing & Management
Volume 41, Issue 2
March 2005, 361-381
Published by William Wood
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