Search Result Presentation: Supporting Post-Search Navigation by Integration of Taxonomy Data

As a result of additional semantic annotations and novel mining methods, Web site taxonomies are more and more available to machines, including search engines. Recent research shows that after a search result is clicked, users often continue navigating on the destination site because in many cases a single document cannot satisfy the information need. The role Web site taxonomies play in this post-search navigation phase has not yet been researched. In this paper we analyze in an empirical study of three highly-frequented Web sites how Web site taxonomies influence the next browsing steps of users arriving from a search engine. The study reveals that users not randomly explore the destination site, but proceed to the direct child nodes of the landing page with significantly higher frequency compared to the other linked pages. We conclude that the common post-search navigation strategy in taxonomies is to descend towards more specific results. The study has interesting implications for the presentation of search results. Current search engines focus on summarizing the linked document only. In doing so, search engines ignore the fact the linked documents are in many cases just the starting point for further navigation. ... mehrBased on the observed post-search navigation strategy, we propose to include information about child nodes of linked documents in the presentation of
search results. Users would benefit by saving clicks, because they could not only estimate whether the linked document provides useful information, but also whether post-search navigation is promising.