STUDY OF QUERY BASED HIERARCHICAL SEGMENTATION OF WEB SEARCH USER LOGS

This paper proposes an approach to interactive information retrieval (IR) contextually within a multitasking framework. The implications of our findings for Web design and further research are discussed. Web search engine users may information multitask in two ways. First, a user may begin their Web search with multiple topics, or second begin with a single topic and then develop additional topics during the search process. Both processes include information task switching, or switching back and forth between different topics during a search session. For example, a user may switch between seeking health information and new car information as they think and work on multiple information problems concurrently. Currently, search technologies necessitate that users search sequentially and are designed to largely support only limited types of searching by specifying queries using terms to select documents or Web sites to fulfill a single information task. However, people in fact accomplish searching in much more complex ways than just this method of query specification and selection.