Tips for Tracking Web Information Seeking Behavior

Abstract

This chapter provides various tips for practitioners and researchers who wish to track end-user Web information seeking behavior. These tips are derived in large part from the authors’ own experience of collecting and analyzing individual differences, task, and Web tracking data to investigate people’s online information seeking behaviors at a specific municipal community portal site (myhamilton.ca). The tips discussed in this chapter include: (1) the need to account for both task and individual differences in any Web information seeking behavior analysis; (2) how to collect Web metrics through deployment of a unique ID that links individual differences, task, and Web tracking data together; (3) the types of Web log metrics to collect; (4) how to go about collecting and making sense of such metrics; and (5) the importance of addressing privacy concerns at the start of any collection of Web tracking information.