Search engine pictures: Empirical analysis of a web search engine query log

Abstract

Since the use of internet has incredibly increased, it becomes an important source of knowledge about anything for everyone. Therefore, the role of search engine as an effective approach to find information is critical for internet's users. The study of search engine users' behavior has attracted considerable research attention. These studies are helpful in developing more effective search engine and are useful in three points of view: for users at the personal level, for search engine vendors at the business level, and for government and marketing at social society level. These kinds of studies can be done through analyzing the log file of search engine wherein the interactions between search engine and the users are captured. In this paper, we aim to present analyses on the query log of a well-known and most used Persian search engine. Our analyses are presented in three main categories: 1) Stats-based analyses, 2) Temporal- based analyses, and 3) Topic-based analyses. The obtained results are promising. Mobile users often posted queries in weekends, whereas Web users utilize the search engine in workweeks. The majority of queries posted form most-populated cities. Additionally, Iranians are mostly interested in political, social, and economical topics.