Paper Info
Title
ViewSer: enabling large-scale remote user studies of web search examination and interaction
Abstract
Web search behaviour studies, including eye-tracking studies of search result examination, have resulted in numerous insights to improve search result quality and presentation. Yet, eye tracking studies have been restricted in scale, due to the expense and the effort required. Furthermore, as the reach of the Web expands, it becomes increasingly important to understand how searchers around the world see and interact with the search results. To address both challenges, we introduce ViewSer, a novel methodology for performing web search examination studies remotely, at scale, and without requiring eye-tracking equipment. ViewSer operates by automatically modifying the appearance of a search engine result page, to clearly show one search result at a time as if through a "viewport", while partially blurring the rest and allowing the participant to move the viewport naturally with a computer mouse or trackpad. Remarkably, the resulting result viewing and clickthrough patterns agree closely with unrestricted viewing of results, as measured by eye-tracking equipment, validated by a study with over 100 participants. We also explore applications of ViewSer to practical search tasks, such as analyzing the search result summary (snip- pet) attractiveness, result re-ranking, and evaluating snippet quality. These experiments could have only be done previously by tracking the eye movements for a small number of subjects in the lab. In contrast, our study was performed with over 100 participants, allowing us to reproduce and extend previous findings, establishing ViewSer as a valuable tool for large-scale search behavior experiments.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1145/2009916.2009967
SIGIR
Keywords
Field
DocType
web search behaviour study,search result quality,eye-tracking equipment,search result examination,large-scale search behavior experiment,large-scale remote user study,web search examination study,search engine result page,practical search task,search result summary,search result,search engine,eye movement,eye tracking
Search engine,Viewport,Information retrieval,Computer science,Eye movement,Eye tracking,Search analytics,Snippet,Touchpad,User studies
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
28
2.22
21
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Dmitry Lagun135114.96
Eugene Agichtein24549269.70