Web search query

A web search query is a query that a user enters into web search engine to satisfy his or her information needs. Web search queries are distinctive in that they are unstructured and often ambiguous; they vary greatly from standard query languages which are governed by strict syntax rules.

Types

There are four broad categories that cover most web search queries:

Informational queries – Queries that cover a broad topic (e.g., colorado or trucks) for which there may be thousands of relevant results.

Navigational queries – Queries that seek a single website or web page of a single entity (e.g., youtube or delta air lines).

Transactional queries – Queries that reflect the intent of the user to perform a particular action, like purchasing a car or downloading a screen saver.

Search engines often support a fourth type of query that is used far less frequently:

Connectivity queries – Queries that report on the connectivity of the indexed web graph (e.g., Which links point to this URL?, and How many pages are indexed from this domain name?).

Characteristics

• The average length of a search query was 2.4 terms.
• About half of the users entered a single query while a little less than a third of users entered three or more unique queries.
• Close to half of the users examined only the first one or two pages of results (10 results per page).
• Less than 5% of users used advanced search features (e.g., Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT).
• The top four most frequently used terms were , (empty search), and, of.