Towards improving web search: A large-scale exploratory study of selected aspects of user search behavior

Abstract

Recently, the Web has made dramatic impact on our lives becoming for many people a main information source. We believe that the continuous study of user needs and their search behavior is a necessary key factor for a technology to be able to keep along with society changes. In this paper we report the results of a large scale online questionnaire conducted in order to investigate the ways in which users search the Web and the kinds of needs they have. We have analyzed the results based on the respondents' attributes such as age and gender. The findings should be considered as hypotheses for further systematic studies. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.