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Abstract

To optimize the performance of search engines, it is important to understand (human) online searching behavior.

We examine search queries in four different German (meta) search engines to describe some general patterns of search queries such as the percentage of operators used in search queries, length of queries and number of queries per time unit (days or hours). We also analyze the frequencies of queries and terms respectively. In addition, we describe the functionality of the vocabulary growth. Further, we try to find differences between search queries in meta and general search engines.

With this information in mind, we give some managerial implications for search engines.

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg

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Schmidt-Mänz, N., Koch, M. (2005). Patterns in Search Queries. In: Baier, D., Decker, R., Schmidt-Thieme, L. (eds) Data Analysis and Decision Support. Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Organization. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28397-8_15

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