WA Search Log Analysis

Question 1

What are search logs?

Answer 1

Search logs are an unobtrusive method of collecting significant amounts of searching data on a sizable number of system users.

Question 2

Define search logs for web searching.

Answer 2

For Web searching, a search log is an electronic record
of interactions that have occurred during a searching
episode between a Web search engine and users
searching for information on that Web search engine.

Question 3

What is a searching period?

Answer 3

A searching episode is a period of user interaction with
a search engine that may be composed of one or more
sessions.

Question 4

What does the search log format contain?

Answer 4

Search logs are a special type of transaction log file.

This search log format has most in common with the
extended file format, which contains data such as the

client computer’s IP address,
user query,
search engine access time, and
referrer site

Question 5

Define SLA.

Answer 5

SLA is defined as the use of data collected in a search
log to investigate particular research questions
concerning interactions among Web users, the Web
search engine, or the Web content during searching
episodes.

Question 6

What are the objectives of SLA?

Answer 6

1. improved system design,
2. advanced searching assistance,
3. better understanding of some user information searching behavior.

Question 7

What are the 3 major stages invloved in SLA?

Answer 7

Data collection: the process of collecting the interaction data for a given period in a transaction log;

Preparation: the process of cleaning and preparing the transaction log data for analysis;

Analysis: the process of analyzing the prepared data.

Question 8

How to make search logs useful?

Answer 8

Get a list with the top 1000 query terms over 3–6 months.

Sort another copy of the log data by IP address or user identifier, then by timestamp.

Get the list of search terms with no results.

Get the list of longest queries.