Searcher in a Strange Land: Understanding Web Search from Familiar and Unfamiliar Locations

With mobile devices, web search is no longer limited to specific locations. People conduct search from practically anywhere, including at home, at work, when traveling and when on vacation. How should this influence search tools and web services? In this paper, we argue that information needs are affected by the familiarity of the environment. To formalize this idea, we propose a new contextualization model for activities on the web. The model distinguishes between a search from a familiar place (F-search) and a search from an unfamiliar place (U-search). We formalize the notion of familiarity, and propose a method to identify familiar places. An analysis of a query log of millions of users, demonstrates the differences between search activities in familiar and in unfamiliar locations. Our novel take on search contextualization has the potential to improve web applications, such as query autocompletion and search personalization.