Mobile Information Access A Study of Emerging Search Behavior on the Mobile Internet

1
Mobile Information AccessA Study of Emerging
Search Behavior on the Mobile Internet

• Authors
• Karen Church and Barry Smyth of University
  College Dublin
• and
• Paul Cotter and Keith Bradley of ChangingWorlds
• Publication Date May 2007

• Presented By Brian Krupp

2
Introduction

• What is this research about?
• Mobile Phone / Mobile Internet (MI) Emergence
• Browsing vs Searching
• Why should I be interested?
• Own a Mobile Internet Device?
• Have a Data Plan?
• Mobile Content Delivery
• WML XHTML (Web Development)

3
Previous Research / Related Studies

• The Excite Studies (Early Web Search Use)
• Altavista 1998 and 2002
• Fireball (2000) and AllTheWeb (2005) - European
• Google Mobile 2006

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Research Questions / What We Want to Discover

1. Browsing Dominance on Mobile Internet
2. Differences Between Browsing/Search Users
3. Effect of Mobile Devices on Mobile Internet
4. How Mobile Internet is Searched
5. Query Patterns in Searches
6. Use of Advanced Search Options (eg Boolean)
7. Modification of Search Queries
8. Type of Information Looked At

5
Research Design / How We Will Do Our Research

• How and Where Data Was Collected
• Definition of Terms Used Throughout Paper from
  Data
• Session
• Term
• Query
• How the Data Was Analyzed
• Browsing vs Search
• Search Engines and Devices
• Emerging Search Behavior

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Results Session Level Analysis

• Browsing Session vs Search Session
• Browsing Still Has Significant Dominance in MI
• Browsing Has More Average Number of Sessions

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Results Session Level Analysis

• So Browsing is Dominant?

• Search Sessions Higher in Duration, Bytes, and
  of Requests

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Results Session Level Analysis

• Search Sessions Dominance in Requests, Kbytes,
  and Seconds Close the Gap (a little)

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Results User Level Analysis

• Search User Has Higher Avg. Number of Sessions
• Browse User Still Dominates of Sessions

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Results User Level Analysis

• As With Previous Data, Duration, Data, and of
  Requests, Search Still Dominates

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Results Search Engines and Devices

• Google Dominates in Traditional Web Access, What
  About MI?

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Results Device Analysis

• Browsing Sessions
• How Does the Device Affect Usage?
• What Patterns Do We See?

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Results Device Analysis

• Search Sessions
• How Does the Device Affect Usage?
• What Patterns Do We See?

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Results Query Level Analysis

• How does MI Affect Search Queries?
• Query Length (Down) Advanced Features (Down)
  Searches Per Session (Up) Unique Queries (Down)

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Results Query Level Analysis

• MI Shorter Queries, Broader Searches

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Results Query Level Analysis

• Mobile Users Rarely Use Advanced Search
  Operations
• Does the Mobile Device Affect this?

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Results Query Level Analysis

• Almost 50 of Users Submitting 1 Query per Day

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Results Query Level Analysis

• Initial, Modified, Identical, and Zero-Term
  Queries
• How Often Was Search Refined?

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Results Query Level Analysis

• Users Incrementally Modify their Search

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Results Query Level Analysis

• How Do We Measure Similarity?
• How Similar Were Queries?

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Results What Topics Are Searched

• Adult Content Leads
• Keep an Eye on 8

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Discussion

• Browsing vs Searching
• Browsing Dominance
• Search on the Rise
• Device and Search Engine Usage
• Google Dominance (But More Mobile Search Engines)
• Advanced Handsets (Phones)
• Emerging Search Behavior
• Effect of Limited Text Input
• Query Length and Overlap

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Implications

• Utilizing Query Repetition
• Recommending Queries (Query Modification)
• Enriching Mobile Content
• WML vs XHTML
• Web Pages Sizes Affect on Data Plans

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Conclusion

• Dominance of Portal Browsing Activities
• Search Sessions Are Richer
• MI Devices Are Modern, Specifically for Search
  Users
• MI Queries Are Shorter
• High Rate of Query Modifications for MI
• Future Research
• Query Repetition, Query Modification, Search
  Sessions Being Richer, More Analysis on Behavior
  Changes

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Questions?