Papular Content
Laser beam powered optical transistor may lead to ultrafast light-based computers
London, July 2 : Swiss researchers have made an optical transistor that uses one laser beam to control another, an in...Clinton condemns "senseless" attack in Indonesia
Washington - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned Friday the bombing of two prominent hotels in In...Iraqi officer gunned down in Mosul
A group of men fatally shot an Iraqi police officer in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday afternoon, police t...
PM congratulates Indian Women Hockey team over victory in Kazan
New Delhi, July 1 : Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Wednesday congratulated the Indian Women Hockey team on winn...Sotomayor in the limelight: Supreme Court nominee before US Senate
Washington - Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic woman ever nominated to the US Supreme Court, confronted acc...
Home 
Tech World Tech World Future search engines won’t need you to repeatedly change terms upon failures
Tech World Tech World Future search engines won’t need you to repeatedly change terms upon failures
| Future search engines won’t need you to repeatedly change terms upon failures |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Neena Sareen |
| Monday, 15 June 2009 17:24 |
|
Jim Jansen, associate professor of Information Sciences and Technology, analysed nearly 1 million Web searches to detect patterns of query reformulation and create models to predict them, which may help create more advanced search engines. The researcher believes that, once failed to find any information, such engines would make further searches on behalf of any person without the user having to change search terms. "The key finding in the research is that we are moving from descriptive aspects to predictive models in Web searching," said Jansen. Writing about the research team’s work in the online edition of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Jansen revealed that the search terms in 22 percent of queries were reformulated or changed to more precisely convey the information for which the user was searching. "They typically moved to narrow their query at the start of the session, moving to reformulation in the mid and latter portions of the sessions. It appears that the assistance to narrow the query and alternate query terms would be most beneficial immediately after the initial query submission," Jansen said. The Penn State team also found low rates of users asking for system assistance in helping to find the desired information -- perhaps because they are too focused on using their own search terms to find information. "The implication is that system assistance should be most specifically targeted when the user is making a cognitive shift because it appears users are open to system intervention," Jansen said. Jansen considers this study to be a critical step in helping to design more advanced search engines. "Given that one can predict future states of query formulation based on previous and present states with a reasonable degree of accuracy, one can design information systems that provide query reformulation assistance, automated searching assistance systems, recommender systems and others," Jansen said. (ANI) |