How to define searching sessions on web search engines

Bernard J. Jansen*, Amanda Spink, Vinish Kathuria

*Corresponding author for this work

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

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this research, we investigate three techniques for defining user sessions on Web search engines. We analyze 2,465,145 interactions from 534,507 Web searchers. We compare three methods for defining sessions using: 1) Internet Protocol address and cookie; 2) Internet Protocol address, cookie, and a temporal limit on intra-session interactions; and 3) Internet Protocol address, cookie, and query reformulation patterns. Research results shows that defining sessions by query reformulation provides the best measure of session identification, with a nearly 95% accuracy. This method also results in an 82% increase in the number of sessions compared to Internet Protocol address and cookie alone. Regardless of the method, mean session length was fewer than three queries and the mean session duration was less than 30 minutes. Implications are that unique sessions may be a better indicator than the common industry metric of unique visitors for measuring search traffic. Results of this research may lead to tools to better support Web searching.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Web Mining and Web Usage Analysis - 8th International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery on the Web, WebKDD 2006, Revised Papers
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages92-109
Number of pages18
ISBN (Print)354077484X, 9783540774846
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2007
Externally publishedYes
Event8th International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery on the Web, WebKDD 2006 - Philadelphia, PA, United States
Duration: 20 Aug 200620 Aug 2006

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume4811 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference8th International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery on the Web, WebKDD 2006
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhiladelphia, PA
Period20/08/0620/08/06

Keywords

  • Markov states
  • Query reformulation
  • Web queries
  • Web sessions

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