skip to main content
10.1145/1963192.1963267acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesthewebconfConference Proceedingsconference-collections
poster

Finding our way on the web: exploring the role of waypoints in search interaction

Published: 28 March 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Information needs are rarely satisfied directly on search engine result pages. Searchers usually need to click through to search results (landing pages) and follow search trails beyond those pages to fulfill information needs. We use the term waypoints to describe pages visited by searchers between the trail origin (the landing page) and the trail destination. The role that waypoints play in search interaction is poorly understood yet can be vital in determining search success. In this poster we analyze log data to determine the arrangement and function of waypoints, and study how these are affected by variations in information goals. Our findings have implications for understanding search behavior and for the design of interactive search support based on waypoints.

References

[1]
Bates, M.J. (1989). The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface. Online Review, 13(5): 407--424.
[2]
Downey, D., Dumais, S., Liebling, D. and Horvitz, E. (2008). Understanding the relationship between searchers' queries and information goals. Proc. CIKM, 449--458.
[3]
Pirolli, P. and Card, S.K. (1999). Information foraging. Psychological Review, 106(4): 643--675.
[4]
O'Day, V. and Jeffries, R. (1993). Orienteering in an information landscape: how information seekers get from here to there. Proc. INTERCHI, 438--445.
[5]
Teevan, J., Dumais, S. and Liebling, D. (2008). To personalize or not to personalize: modeling queries with variation in user intent. Proc. SIGIR, 163--170.
[6]
White, R.W., Bilenko, M. and Cucerzan, S. (2007). Studying the use of popular destinations to enhance web search interaction. Proc. SIGIR, 159--166.
[7]
White, R.W. and Drucker, S.M. (2007). Investigating behavioral variability in web search. Proc. WWW, 21--30.
[8]
White, R.W. and Huang, J. (2010). Assessing the scenic route: measuring the value of search trails in web logs. Proc. SIGIR, 587--594.

Cited By

View all
  • (2015)Information gathering in networks via active explorationProceedings of the 24th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence10.5555/2832249.2832385(981-988)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2015
  • (2015)Mining Missing Hyperlinks from Human Navigation TracesProceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web10.1145/2736277.2741666(1242-1252)Online publication date: 18-May-2015
  • (2014)Comparing client and server dwell time estimates for click-level satisfaction predictionProceedings of the 37th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research & development in information retrieval10.1145/2600428.2609468(895-898)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2014
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Finding our way on the web: exploring the role of waypoints in search interaction

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Information & Contributors

        Information

        Published In

        cover image ACM Other conferences
        WWW '11: Proceedings of the 20th international conference companion on World wide web
        March 2011
        552 pages
        ISBN:9781450306379
        DOI:10.1145/1963192

        In-Cooperation

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 28 March 2011

        Permissions

        Request permissions for this article.

        Check for updates

        Author Tags

        1. search trails
        2. waypoints

        Qualifiers

        • Poster

        Conference

        WWW '11
        WWW '11: 20th International World Wide Web Conference
        March 28 - April 1, 2011
        Hyderabad, India

        Acceptance Rates

        Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

        Contributors

        Other Metrics

        Bibliometrics & Citations

        Bibliometrics

        Article Metrics

        • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
        • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
        Reflects downloads up to 28 Feb 2025

        Other Metrics

        Citations

        Cited By

        View all
        • (2015)Information gathering in networks via active explorationProceedings of the 24th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence10.5555/2832249.2832385(981-988)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2015
        • (2015)Mining Missing Hyperlinks from Human Navigation TracesProceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web10.1145/2736277.2741666(1242-1252)Online publication date: 18-May-2015
        • (2014)Comparing client and server dwell time estimates for click-level satisfaction predictionProceedings of the 37th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research & development in information retrieval10.1145/2600428.2609468(895-898)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2014
        • (2014)The last clickProceedings of the 7th ACM international conference on Web search and data mining10.1145/2556195.2556232(213-222)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2014

        View Options

        Login options

        View options

        PDF

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader

        Figures

        Tables

        Media

        Share

        Share

        Share this Publication link

        Share on social media