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Exploring web neighbours in exploratory search

Kemal Efe (Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA)
Alp Asutay (Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, Bellevue, Washington, USA)
Arun Lakhotia (Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA)

International Journal of Web Information Systems

ISSN: 1744-0084

Article publication date: 21 June 2011

426

Abstract

Purpose

Access to related information is a key requirement for exploratory search. The purpose of this research is to understand where related information may be found and how it may be explored by users.

Design/methodology/approach

Earlier research provides sufficient evidence that web graph neighborhoods of returned search results may contain documents related to users' intended search topic. However, in the literature, no interface mechanisms have been presented to enable exploration of these neighborhoods by users. Based on a modified web graph, this paper proposes tools and methods for displaying and exploring the graph neighborhood of any selected item in the search results list. Important issues that arise when implementing such an exploration model are discussed and utility of the proposed system is evaluated with user experiments.

Findings

In user experiments first, information related to intended search topic was often found in the web neighborhood of search results; second, exploring these graph neighborhoods with the proposed tools improved users' ability to reach the information they sought.

Research limitations/implications

The test participants are computer science graduate students. Their skills may not be representative of the broad user population.

Originality/value

The lessons learned from this research point to a potentially fruitful direction for designing new search engine interfaces that support exploratory search.

Keywords

Citation

Efe, K., Asutay, A. and Lakhotia, A. (2011), "Exploring web neighbours in exploratory search", International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 152-182. https://doi.org/10.1108/17440081111141781

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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