You ask “Durian”, I gave “Musang King, Red Prawn and D24”: A Query Reformulation Behavior Experiment

Abstract

The success of finding relevant information using search engines is highly dependent on the query used by the user. Therefore, an effective query formulation and reformulation is an important strategy in information search. The challenges become harder when finding for more in-depth information in a particular topic or domain. This paper aims to investigate the query behavior when searching for information in a given topic. We chose Durian as the topic of the study. To achieve the goal of the study, a user study was carried out using a task-driven experiment in which 12 scenario-based search tasks were designed for the user to complete using the Google search engine. A total of 4531 queries being analyzed, 3595 reformulation being made by 936 search tasks being submitted by 78 users who engaged in the experiment. The results reveal that 98% of the user performed query reformulation during the search and specification was the most frequent query reformulation strategy used by the users. In terms of the number of query words used, most of the users used 3 to 5 words in their query. In addition, majority of the users prefer to use natural language queries over keyword queries. This work provides insights to the query reformulation behavior in domain-specific information search, as well as the guidance for designing better query formulation assistance in search engine technology.