A study of multitasking Web search

Author

Ozmutlu, Seda ; Ozmutlu, H. Cenk ; Spink, Amanda

Author_Institution

Dept. of Ind. Eng., Uludag Univ., Bursa, Turkey

fYear

2003

fDate

28-30 April 2003

Firstpage

145

Lastpage

148

Abstract

We present findings from a study of users performing multitasking searches on Web search engines. A user´s single session with a Web search engine may consist of seeking information on single or multiple topics. Limited research has focused on multitasking search query session. The main objective of the study is to provide a detailed analysis of multitasking sessions. FAST search sessions were used to analyze multitasking Web searches. Findings include: (1) almost one third of FAST users perform multitasking Web searching; (2) multitasking sessions often included more than three topics per session; (3) multitasking sessions are longer in duration than regular searching sessions; and (4) most of the topic in multitasking searches were on general information, computers and entertainment.

Keywords

information resources; information retrieval; search engines; Web search engines; computer information searching; entertainment information searching; information seeking; multitasking Web search; multitasking search query session; Electronic mail; Frequency; Industrial engineering; Information analysis; Information retrieval; Information technology; Large-scale systems; Multitasking; Search engines; Web search;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Information Technology: Coding and Computing [Computers and Communications], 2003. Proceedings. ITCC 2003. International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1916-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ITCC.2003.1197516

Filename

1197516