Query Log Analysis

Query log analysis — also called transaction-log analysis — studies the records that search systems automatically keep of what users typed, what they clicked, and when. Rather than asking users what they do or testing systems in the laboratory, it observes millions of real searches as they actually happened. The landmark studies by Jansen, Spink, and Saracevic on the Excite engine and by Silverstein and colleagues on AltaVista revealed a consistent and surprising picture: real web queries are very short, rarely use advanced operators, and users almost never look past the first page of results. By cleaning logs, reconstructing sessions, and tabulating term, query, and session statistics, the method turns raw server records into a behavioral portrait of how people really search.