Searching through cyberspace: The effects of link display and link density on information retrieval from hypertext on the World Wide Web

Abstract

This study investigated information retrieval from hypertext on Internet's World Wide Web (WWW). Significant main and interaction effects were found for both link density (number of links per display) and display format (in paragraphs or lists) on search performance. Low link densities displayed in list format produced the best overall results, in terms of search accuracy, search time, number of links explored, and search task prioritization. Lower densities affected user ability to prioritize search tasks and produced more accurate searches, while list displays positively affected all aspects of searching except task prioritization. The performance of novices and experts, in terms of their previous experience browsing hypertext on the WWW, was compared. Experts performed better, mostly because of their superior task prioritization. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Facilitating navigation in information spaces: Road-signs on the World Wide Web

“…Additionally, annotations could indicate the location of a resource relative to the current page thereby giving information about the organization of hypertext documents (Khan & Locatis, 1997). Any additional information about a link might be displayed using traffic light-like annotations.…”

Evaluation of Web sites

“…La decisión sobre cuántos enlaces y de qué tipo se deben incluir en cada página para evitar los problemas arriba mencionados ha llevado a la realización de muchos estudios en los últimos años, entre los que se encuentra el realizado por Khan y Locatis (14) y que llega a las siguientes conclusiones:…”

A conceptual framework for understanding information seeking in open-ended information systems

“…Both naive and knowledgeable users face challenges as they work in hypermedia information systems; the size of the challenge varies depending on the type of user (Khan & Locatis, 1998;Marchionini, 1995). When users are reactive, as in the case of typical naive users, the challenges they face are considerable.…”

“…In addition, knowledgeable users prioritize their tasks as they work in the system (Khan & Locatis, 1998). Knowledgeable users have distinct advantages over naive users when deciphering options presented on the hit list.…”