Searcher in a strange land: Understanding web search from familiar and unfamiliar locations

Elad Kravi, Eugene Agichtein, Ido Guy, Yaron Kanza, Avihai Mejer, Dan Pelleg

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

With mobile devices, web search is no longer limited to specific locations. People conduct search from practically anywhere, including at home, at work, when traveling and when on vacation. How should this influence search tools and web services? In this paper, we argue that information needs are affected by the familiarity of the environment. To formalize this idea, we propose a new contextualization model for activities on the web. The model distinguishes between a search from a familiar place (F-search) and a search from an unfamiliar place (U-search). We formalize the notion of familiarity, and propose a method to identify familiar places. An analysis of a query log of millions of users, demonstrates the differences between search activities in familiar and in unfamiliar locations. Our novel take on search contextualization has the potential to improve web applications, such as query autocompletion and search personalization.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSIGIR 2015 - Proceedings of the 38th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages855-858
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450336215
DOIs
StatePublished - 9 Aug 2015
Externally publishedYes
Event38th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, SIGIR 2015 - Santiago, Chile
Duration: 9 Aug 201513 Aug 2015

Publication series

NameSIGIR 2015 - Proceedings of the 38th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval

Conference

Conference38th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, SIGIR 2015
Country/TerritoryChile
CitySantiago
Period9/08/1513/08/15

Keywords

  • Location-based search
  • Query language modeling
  • Search personalization
  • Web search modeling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Information Systems
  • Software

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