ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ March 1998/ 155 C o l l e g e & R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s news How successfully do users search the Web? One real-time site allows you to “spy” on searchers by Julia K. Nims and Linda Rich I t has long been a desire of academic li brarians everywhere to look over th shoulders of library users and observe how they actually search for information. With out blatantly violating our users’ privacy an sacrificing our professional ethics, we hav been unable to do this with any great suc cess. This was our predicament until w learned about the McKinley Search Voyeu Web site (http://voyeur.mckinley.com/cgi bin/voyeur.cgi), a real-time site that allow people to view a sample of searches cur rently entered by users of the McKinle Magellan search engine. With great anticipation, we visited th site, and it captivated us immediately; first perhaps, by the large number of sex-relate searches, but secondly, because of the larg num ber of obviously poorly planned searches. As librarians who regularly teach univer sity students search strategies, both for elec tronic databases and the Web, we began t consider what we could learn from visitin this site. What types of mistakes do people make when searching the Web? Could we generalize that our university’s students were conducting similarly poor searches when they searched the Web? If we could make this jump from Magellan users to our local users, how could what we learned from the Web Voyeur help us when we instructed ou ­ e ­ d e ­ e r - s ­ y e , d e ­ ­ o g r students? Ideally, of course, we would like to study the Web searches performed by Bowling Green State University students alone. At this point, such examination is not possible and perhaps not desirable with all the ethical considerations. However, we are not averse to using a “spy” service freely available on the Web. M agellan and the "W eb V oye u r" Magellan (http://www.mckinley.com) de­ scribes itself as “an online guide to the Web that includes original editorial content, a directory of rated and reviewed Web sites, a vast database of yet-to-be reviewed sites, and a powerful search engine … ” ([http:// www.mckinley.com/feature.cgi?faq_bd] March 22, 1997). As an online guide to the Web, users can browse the Magellan data­ base, going from one general topic, such as art, to more specific topics such as muse­ ums. Additionally, they could use the Magellan search engine to search a huge Web database. Search Voyeur, a Magellan service, al­ lows people to peek in on searches cur­ rently conducted on the Magellan site. The page shows a random selection of current searches and automatically refreshes itself every 15 seconds. If a search seems inter­ esting, voyeurs can click on the search and jump to the results screen. By examining the searches appearing on the “Search Voy­ About the authors Julia K. Nims is coordinator o f library user education and Linda Rich is reference librarian at Bowling Green State University; e-mail: jknims@bgnet. bgsu.edu; lrich@bgnet. bgsu. edu http://voyeur.mckinley.com/cgi- http://www.mckinley.com http://www.mckinley.com/feature.cgi?faq_bd 156/C&RL News ■ March 1998 eur” screen, we made some observations about the search strategies of the public. Our study Before going further, let’s clarify what we cannot ascertain from this site. First, as we viewed the searches we kept in mind that we do not know the intent of the searcher, and we do not know if the searcher was satisfied with the results of the search. Sec­ ond, we do not know how faithful the Search Voyeur mirrors the searches entered in the Magellan search engines. For example, we could not determine if searches displayed on Search Voyeur were marked to search the entire Web or whether they were marked to only include Magellan’s “reviewed sites,” an option Magellan gives on its front search screen. We tried to do a search of our own in which we had marked “reviewed sites only.” After numerous tries, we found what appeared to be our search on the Search Voyeur site. When we followed the link to the results screen, the screen stated that it had searched the entire Web, not just the reviewed sites. Of course, it is remotely possible that the search we followed on the Search Voyeur was not our search. How­ ever, it is important to realize that this oc­ currence suggests that the Search Voyeur may not always mirror searches entered from the Magellan search page. We encountered another problem while studying Search Voyeur— the Magellan search engine changed drastically. Early in our study, Magellan used its own search engine software with its own rules for en­ tering precise searches. Toward the end of our examination of Search Voyeur, Magellan switched to new search engine software. This change in software radically changed how Web pages are retrieved since the new search engine software searches for con­ cepts, not only key words. With this change in search engine software, we observed a severe change in the content focus of the searches listed on the Search Voyeur site. When we first visited the site, a large per­ centage of the searches were sex-related. After the switch in software, very few of the searches had to do with sex at all. Either the users of Magellan suddenly started searching for topics other than sex- related ones or the administrators at Magellan started filtering some searches from Search Voyeur. (We contacted Magellan and asked for an explanation of these changes. They did not reply to our requests for information.) Because of these unknowns with the Search Voyeur, we chose to focus our ques­ tions on observed search strategies and not on content. We examined the Search Voy­ eur pages during four, 30 minute sessions over a six-week period, coming up with 1,090 search strings from which we could make generalizations. So what are the mis­ takes that are being made? We categorized the following “mistakes” as we see them: • one-word searches • inclusion of stop words • typing errors • inclusion of entire or partial URLs • exclusion of Magellan’s “fine tuning” suggestions for conducting productive searches. One-w ord searches After studying the Voyeur site for approxi­ mately 240 minutes and examining 1,090 individual search strings, we counted 353 one-word searches that appeared on the voyeur screen. While some one-word searches might have been specific enough to retrieve relevant pages, most of the one- word searches would be considered inef­ fective on any database. For example, we observed searches for each of the following terms: “computer,” “women,” “sex,” and “au­ tomobiles.” One search that appeared on the Voyeur site was “network.” What was this searcher trying to find? Information on television networks or, perhaps, computer networks? Or was the searcher looking for techniques for employee networking within a corporation? We followed the search link, and indeed it had retrieved sites dealing with a great variety of “networks,” including com­ puter networks, research networks, and tele­ vision networks. Even without knowing the searcher’s intent, it is safe to deduce that this was a poor search. Perhaps the searcher waded through the large number of unre­ lated sites to find the needed information, but it could not have been an efficient search. Inclusion o f stop w ords Sixty-two of the observed searches included C&RL News March 1998/ 157 ■ Tips for successful Web searching In general: • Always check for typos! • Try searching for multiple terms or phrases rather than a single word. • Read the search en gin e’s help screens! Web Search Engine Features Search AND, OR, Truncation Phrase Upper/ URL Engine NOT— (+/-) Searching Lower Case Searching AltaVista +/- use“*” quotation upper case yes www.altavista. and, or, and marks retrieves (ex. digital.com not exact match u: image) Excite +/- no quotation matches no www.excite, AND, OR marks capital letters com AND NOT (must be in caps) HotBot +/- no quotation insensitive no www.hotbot. and, or, not marks (except for com “interesting cases”) Lycos +/- automatic quotation insensitive no www.lycos.com and, or, not marks M agellan +/- no quotation matches no www.mckinley. AND, OR, marks capital com AND NOT letters (must be in caps) Yahoo! +/- use”*“ quotation upper case yes www.yahoo, and, or, not marks retrieves (ex. com exact match u: image) For more comparisons o f Web search engine features, point to: Search Engine Comparison Chart— Kansas City Public Library http://ww w.kcpl.lib.m o.us/search/chart.htm Search Engine Reviews http://searchenginewatch.com/reviews.htm Search Engine Tips http://w w w .ham line.edu/library/bush/handouts/slatable.htm l http://www.altavista http://www.excite http://www.hotbot http://www.lycos.com http://www.mckinley http://www.yahoo http://www.kcpl.lib.mo.us/search/chart.htm http://searchenginewatch.com/reviews.htm http://www.hamline.edu/library/bush/handouts/slatable.html 158/C&RL News March 1998 ■ stop words, such as the, of, in, and an. The Magellan help screens state that the search engine ignores these words, so theoretically it should not matter whether or not users include them. However, some searches ap­ peared to want these words in them, such as the search “help for hire.” This search could have been for a company by that name, or for this particular phrase on a page. Without determining how to do a phrase search to include the stop word, the searcher probably had a frustrating time trying to find the desired page from the thousands that appeared with the words “help” and “hire” in them. T yp in g errors The number of searches containing typo­ graphical errors did not surprise us. That is a common mistake all library researchers n:ake at one point or another. Disregarding searches for proper names, possible com­ pany or product names, and terms in lan­ guages other than English, we noted 86 searches that included blatant typing errors ( sumbarine instead of submarine, for ex­ ample). What is alarming about these typ­ ing errors is that they retrieve results! For instance, the search for the term “mathmetics” retrieved more than 2,000 re­ sults. (The creators of the pages had mis­ spelled the word, too.) When discussing search strategies with students in an instruc­ tional session, we always suggest that a search on a database that retrieves no re­ sults be retried immediately, checking the spelling. When searching the Web, this gen­ eral principle does not hold true. Virtually any search will bring back some Web pages, and it is entirely possible that the searcher erroneously assumed that he or she had conducted a good search (after all, it did retrieve lots of results). Entire or partial URLs Of the nearly 2,000 searches we observed, 25 contained all or part of a URL. Over the weeks we observed the Search Voyeur, the types of results that searches obtained when searching for a URL differed dramatically. In the early weeks of our study, searches for all or partial URLs did not retrieve the page with that URL. Instead, it located pages that had the URL as a link somewhere on the page. However, in the latter weeks of our study, the Magellan search engine changed, and searches for a URL did jump to pages with that address. Despite the change in the Magellan search engine, we are still concerned about searches for URLs, which imply that the searcher wanted to jump to that page. Rather than typing the URL in the location box, the searcher typed it into the search engine, suggesting an un­ familiarity with navigating the Web. E xclu sion of M agellan search su g g e stio n s Of all the searches we observed, few of them included Magellan search options designed to retrieve precise results. For example, none of the searches employed the “+” in front of a word instructing Magellan that the word must be in all pages returned or a pre­ ceding a word directing Magellan to exclude pages with that word. Furthermore, only 64 of the searches used quotation marks to find specific phrases and none of the searches included any nesting. Less than 13 percent (135 searches) used any Boolean operators. Of the searches that did, none used the op­ erator “not” and only one used the “or” op­ erator. This could be an instance where the Search Voyeur does not accurately mirror the Magellan search strings. However, it is even more probable that Web searchers are not reading the help documentation before doing a search on a Web search engine. What does th is mean to librarians? None of these errors were a surprise to us. We’ve observed them in library instruction sessions and at our reference desk. Searches are not thought out properly, errors are made, erroneous assumptions are rampant. What we did find alarming was that the problems poor search strategies create are magnified when they are conducted on the Web. The most obvious problem is that al­ most any search, no matter how badly con­ structed, will retrieve something on the Web. The next leap of logic that states that what was retrieved must be good information, is unfortunately all too common an occurrence with researchers. In future sessions on how to search the Web, we will stress these com­ mon search strategy errors and suggest ways that our students can avoid them. ■ C&RL News ■ March 1998/159