Struggling or Exploring? Disambiguating Long Search Sessions

Web searchers often exhibit directed search behaviors such as nav-igating to a particular Website. However, in many circumstances they exhibit different behaviors that involve issuing many queries and visiting many results. In such cases, it is not clear whether the user’s rationale is to intentionally explore the results or whether they are struggling to find the information they seek. Being able to disambiguate between these types of long search sessions is im-portant for search engines both in performing retrospective analysis to understand search success, and in developing real-time support to assist searchers. The difficulty of this challenge is amplified since many of the characteristics of exploration (e.g., multiple que-ries, long duration) are also observed in sessions where people are struggling. In this paper, we analyze struggling and exploring be-havior in Web search using log data from a commercial search en-gine. We first compare and contrast search behaviors along a num-ber dimensions, including query dynamics during the session. We then build classifiers that can accurately distinguish between ex-ploring and struggling sessions using behavioral and topical fea-tures. Finally, we show that by considering the struggling/exploring prediction we can more accurately predict search satisfaction