PurposeThis study aims to explore the influence of topic familiarity on the four stages of college students' learning search process.Design/methodology/approachThis study clarified the effects of topic familiarity on students' learning search process by conducting a simulation experiment based on query formulation, information item selection, information sources and learning output.FindingsThe results characterized users' interaction behaviors in increasing topic familiarity through their use of more task descriptions as queries, increased reformulation of queries, construction of more purposeful query formulation, reduced attention to a topic's basic concept content and increased exploration of academic platform contents.Originality/valueThis study proposed three innovative indicators which were proposed to evaluate the effects of topic familiarity on college students' learning search process, and the adopted metrics were useful for observing differences in college students' learning output as their topic familiarity increased. It contributes to the understanding of a user's search process and learning output to support the optimization function of learning-related information search systems and improve their effect on the user's search process for learning.