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Towards a new approach to query search engines: the Search Tree visual language
Author(s) -
Paolino Luca,
Sebillo Monica,
Tortora Genoveffa,
Vitiello Giuliana
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.978
Subject(s) - computer science , usability , search engine , web search query , visual search , query language , information retrieval , web query classification , beam search , query expansion , task (project management) , tree (set theory) , search analytics , language model , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , search algorithm , human–computer interaction , programming language , mathematics , mathematical analysis , management , economics
In this paper, we describe theit Search Tree visual language. It is a novel methodology able to support users to build up complex queries to be run on given search engines. For using this visual language, neither parentheses nor precedence rules are needed, nor the specific ability to perform advanced search tasks. The language is proven to have the same expressive power as the expressions in Sum Of Product form. In order to prove the appropriateness of our proposal, we measured the usability of the proposed querying approach against the traditional Yahoo TM web search query language. Results show that, even if both the approaches fully support users in terms of efficacy, the Search Tree visual language significantly improves task efficiency, both in terms of the number of actions performed and the time requested with respect to the advanced search interface. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.