Explicit verses implicit: an analysis of a multiple search result visualization

When searching on the Web, users often reformulate their queries after viewing the results and viewing some of the pages. After one or two reformulations the user may implicitly realize patterns and relationships between the multiple search results. We believe that these patterns can be used to identify interesting results. We have developed the prototype Search Engine Similarity (SES) tool which explicitly visualizes the similarity between multiple searches. We describe an experiment to determine whether explicitly visualizing the relationships between multiple searches will let users browse more effectively. Our results show that explicit difference visualizations can enhance the search process for some tasks.