Types of Web Queries
– Informational queries cover broad topics and can have thousands of relevant results.
– Navigational queries seek a single website or web page of a single entity.
– Transactional queries reflect the intent of the user to perform a particular action.
– Connectivity queries report on the connectivity of the indexed web graph.
– Search engines often support a fourth type of query, which is used less frequently.
Characteristics of Web Queries
– The average length of a query is 2.4 terms.
– About half of the users enter a single query, while less than a third enter three or more unique queries.
– Close to half of the users only examine the first one or two pages of results.
– Less than 5% of users use advanced search features like boolean operators.
– The most frequently used terms are often empty search, and, of, and sex.
Structured Queries
– Users can use Boolean operators and parentheses to create structured queries.
– Faceted queries are conjunctions of characteristic words.
– Faceted queries allow users to find documents even if they omit certain words.
– This technique is traditionally used by librarians.
– It helps users find documents that cover several topics or facets.
Related Concepts
– Information retrieval is related to web search.
– Web search engine is the tool used for web queries.
– Web query classification categorizes queries into types.
– Taxonomy for search engines organizes search engine features.
– User intent plays a role in web queries.
References
– A taxonomy of web search was proposed by Broder in 2002.
– Jansen, Booth, and Spink conducted a study on the intent of web queries in 2008.
– Sanderson and Kohler analyzed geographic queries in 2004.
– Baeza-Yates discussed applications of web query mining in 2005.
– Figueroa explored effective features for recognizing user intent behind web queries in 2015.
A web query or web search query is a query that a user enters into a web search engine to satisfy their information needs. Web search queries are distinctive in that they are often plain text and boolean search directives are rarely used. They vary greatly from standard query languages, which are governed by strict syntax rules as command languages with keyword or positional parameters.
