Factors affecting click-through behavior in aggregated search interfaces

Abstract

An aggregated search interface is designed to integrate search results from different sources (web, image, video, blog, etc) into a single result page. This paper presents two user studies investigating factors affecting users click-through behavior on aggregated search interfaces. We tested two aggregated search interfaces: one where results from the different sources are blended into a single list (called blended ), and another, where results from each source are presented in a separate panel (called non-blended ). A total of 1,296 search sessions performed by 48 participants were analysed in our study. Our results suggest that 1) the position of search results is significant only in the blended and not in the nonblended design; 2) participants' click-through behavior on videos is different from other sources; and finally 3) capturing a task's orientation towards particular sources is an important factor for further investigation and research.

Task complexity, vertical display and user interaction in aggregated search

“…In later work, Sushmita et al [25] conducted a similar study with an aggregated interface similar to our blended interface and a blocked interface similar to the one used in Sushmita et al [24]. Results showed that users clicked more on verticals that were presented higher in the blended results and on verticals that were more relevant to the task.…”

“…A few user studies have investigated search and preference behavior with aggregated search interfaces [24,25,28]. Sushmita et al [24] experimented with two aggregated search interfaces: one similar to our non-blended interface, which did not combine content from different sources in the main results, and a second interface that combined content from different sources in a two-dimensional blocked fashion.…”

“…A few published studies have investigated user behavior with aggregated search interfaces [24,25,28]. Thus far, these studies show two major trends.…”

“…Thus far, these studies show two major trends. First, when a vertical is relevant, users prefer to see its results towards to the top of the blended results [25,28]. Second, there seems to be a click-bias in favor of visually appealing verticals such as video [25].…”

“…Evaluation of these systems has typically been conducted by using editorial vertical relevance judgements as the gold standard [2,3,4,5,19], or by using user-generated clicks on vertical results as a proxy for relevance [11,23]. While these studies have greatly advanced the state of the art in aggregated search techniques, because users are far removed from the evaluation, they have contributed little insight about how users' higher-level objectives influence their engagement with vertical search results.A few published studies have investigated user behavior with aggregated search interfaces [24,25,28]. Thus far, these studies show two major trends.…”