Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, recently sought to identify the characteristics of users who are looking for real-time content in a recent study involving more than 1 million queries collected over a 190-day period. (more)
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Search engine use is not just part of our daily routines; it also is becoming part of our learning process, according to Penn State researchers. The researchers sought to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching. They examined the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. They found that search engines are primarily used for fact checking users' own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source for information. They also found that people's learning styles can affect how they use search engines. (more)
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Although millions of people use Web search engines, Penn State researchers show that -- by using relatively simple methods -- most queries submitted can be classified into one of three categories. (more)