Analysis of Document Viewing Patterns of Web Search Engine Users

Abstract

This chapter reviews the concepts of Web results page and Web page viewing patterns by users of Web search engines. It presents the advantages of using traditional transaction log analysis in identifying these patterns, serving as a basis for Web usage mining. The authors also present the results of a temporal analysis of Web page viewing, illustrating that the user — information interaction is extremely short. By using real data collected from real users interacting with real Web information retrieval systems, the authors aim to highlight one aspect of the complex environment of Web information seeking.