Are people asking questions of general Web search engines?

Abstract

Recent studies show that many Web users only submit short queries and conduct short search sessions. This paper examines aspects of users' attempting longer more complex queries. Web search services such as Ask Jeeves - publicly accessible question and answer (Q&A) search engines - encourage queries in question or request format. In light of this trend, this study examines whether general Web queries are shifting towards a more question/request format. Previous studies show that some users were submitting question or request format queries to general non-Q&A Web search engines. This paper re-examines this issue by analysing large-scale Web query data from two different (US and European) Web query data sets, including 1.2 million Excite queries (www.excite.com) and 1.2 million AlltheWeb.com (http:// AlltheWeb.com) queries from 2001.