IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v60y2009i5p896-910.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identifying Web search session patterns using cluster analysis: A comparison of three search environments

Author

Listed:
  • Dietmar Wolfram
  • Peiling Wang
  • Jin Zhang

Abstract

Session characteristics taken from large transaction logs of three Web search environments (academic Web site, public search engine, consumer health information portal) were modeled using cluster analysis to determine if coherent session groups emerged for each environment and whether the types of session groups are similar across the three environments. The analysis revealed three distinct clusters of session behaviors common to each environment: “hit and run” sessions on focused topics, relatively brief sessions on popular topics, and sustained sessions using obscure terms with greater query modification. The findings also revealed shifts in session characteristics over time for one of the datasets, away from “hit and run” sessions toward more popular search topics. A better understanding of session characteristics can help system designers to develop more responsive systems to support search features that cater to identifiable groups of searchers based on their search behaviors. For example, the system may identify struggling searchers based on session behaviors that match those identified in the current study to provide context sensitive help.

Suggested Citation

  • Dietmar Wolfram & Peiling Wang & Jin Zhang, 2009. "Identifying Web search session patterns using cluster analysis: A comparison of three search environments," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(5), pages 896-910, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:5:p:896-910
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21034
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21034
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.21034?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iris Xie & Soohyung Joo, 2010. "Tales from the Field: Search Strategies Applied in Web Searching," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-23, August.
    2. Dietmar Wolfram, 2015. "The symbiotic relationship between information retrieval and informetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2201-2214, March.
    3. Xing, Yingying & Wang, Ke & Lu, Jian John, 2020. "Exploring travel patterns and trip purposes of dockless bike-sharing by analyzing massive bike-sharing data in Shanghai, China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:5:p:896-910. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.