Analyzing URL queries

Wei Meng Lee, Mark Sanderson
2010 Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology  
This study investigated a relatively unexamined query type, queries composed of URLs. The extent, variation, and user click-through behavior was examined to determine the intent behind URL queries. The study made use of a search log from which URL queries were identified and selected for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. It was found that URL queries accounted for ∼17% of the sample. There were statistically significant differences between URL queries and non-URL queries in the
more » ... ng attributes: mean query length; mean number of tokens per query; and mean number of clicks per query. Users issuing such queries clicked on fewer result list items higher up the ranking compared to non-URL queries. Classification indicated that nearly 86% of queries were navigational in intent with informational and transactional queries representing about 7% of URL queries each. This is in contrast to past research that suggested that URL queries were 100% navigational. The conclusions of this study are that URL queries are relatively common and that simply returning the page that matches a user's URL is not an optimal strategy.
doi:10.1002/asi.21407 fatcat:hbew5ciyq5gqvcnjavysv42soy