1U.S. VERSUS EUROPEAN WEB SEARCHING TRENDS
Amanda Spink∗
School of Information Sciences and Technology
The Pennsylvania State University
004C Thomas Building, University Park PA 16802
Tel: (814) 865-4454 Fax: (814) 865-5604
E-mail: spink@ist.psu.edu
Seda Ozmutlu & Huseyin C. Ozmutlu
Department of Industrial Engineering
Uludag University
Gorukle Kampusu, Bursa, 16059, Turkey
Tel: (90-224) 442-8176 Fax: (90-224) 442-8021
E-mail: seda@uludag.edu.tr
Bernard J Jansen
School of Information Sciences and Technology
The Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: jjansen@ist.psu.edu* To whom all correspondence should be directed.
INTRODUCTION
As the Web is becoming a worldwide phenomenon we need to understand whatsearching trends are emerging across different global regions. Are there regional
differences in Web searching? What are the differences between searching by the UnitedStates population compared to Europeans? As part of a body of research studying thesequestions, we have analyzed two data sets culled from more than one million queries
submitted by more than 200,000 users of the Excite Web search engine collected in May
2001 and the FAST Web search engine (All theWeb.com), collected in February 2001.
We compare the searching behavior of largely European FAST Web search engineusers (mostly German) with Excite Web search engine users who are largely U.S. This
comparative study shows differences in Web searching by U.S. and European users.
Specifically, the results suggest some differences in the topics searched and searchingbehaviors.
SCOPE OF STUDY
Excite (http://www.excite.com) is a major Internet media company offering Web
searching and a personalization portal. FAST (htpp://www.fast.no) and(http://www.alltheweb.com) Web search engines. We analyzed a data set from the FAST
search engine Web queries submitted on February 6, 2001. The entries are given in the2order they arrive. New sessions/users are identified through a user ID and each query isgiven time stamps in hours, minutes and seconds. Previous studies show thatapproximately 84% of Excite users were located in the United States (Spink, Bateman &Jansen, 1998). The majority of FAST users are believed by FAST to be from Europe,mostly from Germany. The specifications of the Excite and FAST query dataset are listedin Table 1
Our study is limited to the analysis of user queries, as we had no access to data on
the Web sites users’accessed. While only data from Excite and FAST was examined, we
provide a baseline for comparing Web searching trends in the United States and Europe.
The data analysis in this study has the following parts: (1) session and query length andstructure, (2) mean query and session durations, (3) search terms per query, and (4) terms
in queries. The multimedia queries were also sifted from the entire query logs.
Each query log record contained three fields: Identification: anonymous code
assigned by Web company server to a user machine, Time of Day: in hours, minutes, andseconds, Query: user terms as entered. We analyzed user: Sessions - entire query
sequence by a user; Queries - one or more entered terms; Terms - any string of charactersbounded by white space.
Table 1. Excite and FAST 2001 data sets.
2001 Data Set

Sessions

QueriesTerms

Excite262,025

1,025,910

1,538,120

FAST

153,297

451,551

1,350,619

RESULTS
Are there global regional differences in Web searching? Table 2 compares resultsfrom the FAST and Excite query analysis.
Table 2. Comparative statistics for FAST and Excite 2001 Web query data sets – one
million queries per study.
Variables
Mean Terms Per Query
Terms Per Query
1 Term
2 Terms
3+ Terms
Mean Queries Per Session
Session Size
1 Query
2 Queries
3+ Queries

2001 Excite Study(1.2M Queries)
2.6

2001 FAST Study (1.2MQueries)
2.3

26.9%
30.5%
42.6%
2.3

25%
36%
39%
2.9

55.4%
19.3%
25.3%

53%
18.9%
29%

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Variables
Mean Pages Viewed PerQuery% of Use of 100 Most
Frequently Occurring QueryTerms

2001 Excite Study(1.2M Queries)
1.7

2001 FAST Study (1.2MQueries)
2.2

22%

14%

There is little difference in the mean terms per query for FAST and Excite users. The
previous Excite studies also showed little change in Web query length from 1997 to 2001
(Spink, Jansen, Wolfram & Saracevic, 2002), and this trend continues with FAST users.
Web queries by both sets of users are still relatively short and limited to few words. The
continuing use of one short simple query by users suggests that targeting toward specific,
high frequency words (such as free, sex, games, weather, maps, etc.) by Web information
content providers is critical in order to reach Web users.
Query Sessions
FAST users generated slightly more queries per session than Excite user sessions.
The mean length of Excite user sessions has not changed significantly from 1997 to2001(Spink, Jansen, Wolfram & Saracevic, 2002). The Alta Vista study reports also onqueries per session - 77.6% of sessions had one query, 13.5% had two, and 4.4% had
three (Silverstein, Henzinger, Marais, & Moricz, 1999). Most users in the Excite and Alta
Vista studies entered only one query. The mean queries per FAST user sessions wereslightly longer than of Excite users. In addition, a slightly higher proportion of FAST
users submitted three or more unique queries. However, users typically do not add ordelete many terms in their subsequent queries. Comparing data from Excite in 1999 andFAST, we see that some FAST users generated longer queries and sessions by duration(in seconds). Many FAST user sessions also involved queries related to multiple topics
during the same search or multitasking. Multitasking Excite sessions often include
between 2 to more than 10 topics with a mean of 2 topic changes per session (Spink,Ozmutlu & Ozmutlu, 2002).
FAST users viewed more retrieved pages per query than Excite users. Since 1997,
Excite users were viewing fewer pages of results per query. Were FAST users more
willing to view more pages of results? Were Excite users more satisfied with the results
and did not need to view more pages? The trend toward viewing an increasing number ofpages, combined with the larger queries per session, suggests that FAST users may bemore interactive during their Web searching sessions and more persistent in their Web
searching sessions.
Previous studies show that Excite users have a low tolerance for wading throughlarge retrievals (Spink, Jansen, Wolfram & Saracevic, 2002). Another recent longitudinal
study of 20,000 Internet users also concluded that Web searching is changing little insession times (Montgomery & Faloutsos, 2001). FAST users appear to be countering thetrend toward greater simplicity in Web searching. We see higher levels of interactivity by
FAST users, as they create more queries per session and more pages viewed per query.
The variation in level of user interactivity is an area for further research.
Web Query Topics

4Are there differences in topics searched by U.S. and European users? We classified arandom sample of approximately 2,500 Excite and FAST (English language) queries, into
11 non-mutually exclusive, general topic categories.
Table 3. Comparison of general topic categories for Excite and FAST.
Rank
123
4
5678910112001 Excite Data Set(2453 queries)
24.7% Commerce,
travel, employment oreconomy
19.7% People, places orthings2001 FAST Data Set(2503 English Queries)
22.5% People, placesor things

11.3% Unknown

12.3% Commerce,
travel, employment, or economy
10.8% Sex or
pornography
9.1% Entertainment orrecreation
7.8% Health orsciences
4.8% Society, culture,ethnicity or religion

9.6% Computers orInternet
8.5%Sex or
pornography
7.5% Health orsciences
6.6% Entertainmentor recreation
4.5% Education or
humanities
3.9% Society,culture, ethnicity or
religion
2% Government
1.1% Performing or
fine arts

21.8% Computers orInternet

4.7% Performing or finearts
2.9% Education or
humanities2.7%Government
0.6% Unknown

The major categories of FAST search topics were People, places and things, andComputers or Internet. FAST users were searching less on e-commerce related issues andmore on people and computer related issues. The major Excite categories such
Commerce, travel, employment or economy and People, places or things were more
highly ranked than Sex, pornography or preferences and Entertainment or recreation.
The pre-dominance of e-commerce in Excite queries coincided with changes in
information distribution on the publicly indexed Web, greater use of e-commerce by U.Sbased companies (Spink, Jansen, Wolfram & Saracevic, 2002). By 2001, Excite Web
searching continues to move from an entertainment to a business medium.

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Table 4 shows the top 20 terms by frequency for FAST and Excite 2001 users.
Table 4. Top 25 terms for Excite and FAST 2001.
Top 20 Excite 2001 Terms
andoffreethesexinchristmas
nudeforpicturesnewpics
toamusicgames
storiesor
womanuniversity

Top 20 FAST 2001 Terms
andfreedownloadsex
compictures
uk
nude
mp3
hotel
windowspics
wwwjpgcrack
softwareindex
education
newresume

FAST users entered a lower number of high frequency terms than Excite users. The
top 20 FAST query terms by frequency formed a smaller proportion of all terms than wesee with Excite users. The vocabulary of FAST users seems to be broader than previously
identified for Web users (Spink, Jansen, Wolfram & Saracevic, 2002). For both FAST
and Excite users, despite some high frequency terms (e.g., sex, and, etc), a large numberof terms are not repeated or used with low frequency, including personal names, numberof spelling errors, non English terms, Web specific terms (e.g., URLs).
The findings suggest differences in search topics for FAST and Excite users. For
Excite users, the previous studies (Spink, Jansen, Wolfram & Saracevic, 2002) showed an
on-going shift in Web users’ search topics. This finding suggests some differences in
Web searching between European and U.S. based users in search length and topics.

DISCUSSION
Our research confirms previous studies that suggested little movement towards
longer or more complex user sessions (Spink, Jansen, Wolfram & Saracevic, 2002). Our
comparative study of Web query data from two major commercial search engines
provides large-scale findings related to trends and differences in Web searching on a6global level. The paper also suggests interesting differences in search behavior and topics
searched by U.S and European users.
The study suggests some potential regional differences in public Web. Even though
the size of the queries tends to stay the same, there is some movement towards more
frequent queries with FAST users. Search topics continue to be a key vehicle of change.
Overall, we see some differences and similarities in FAST and Excite users related toqueries, sessions and terms. Why are FAST users slightly more interactive? We canspeculate that greater interactivity may be linked to possible cultural differences in
information behaviors and the structure of the Web interface offered by each searchengine. The relationship between interactivity and search effectiveness is also notpossible to assess using the query data we examined and compared. It is also not unusual
to see Web search query sessions that consist of multiple topics or multitasking.
The nature of searching is changing and the search topics are fluid. Why are U.Susers more focused on e-commerce search topics? Again, we can speculate that thedifferences in search topics identified in this comparative study are related to the greater
impact of e-commerce on the U.S economy. Since 1997, the impact of a shift to ecommerce has been a major economic and social shift in the U.S. It seems that some
European users may be more willing to approach Web searching as a more interactiveand longitudinal process. Alternatively, Europeans are not using the Web as much forbusiness information, but more for socially related information.
These possible cultural and social differences represent a major challenge for both
Web search engines and the people who use them. We may see a greater shift to ecommerce search topics by European users in the future as more European businesses
move towards the Web. People are spending more and more time creating, seeking andusing electronic information. However, their interactions with Web search engines arestill relatively short and limited. A new generation of Web searching tools is needed thatare designed to support human information behaviors as people seek to resolve theirinformation problems. Improved Web search will come with the design of more effective
search tools that support user information behaviors. But also, Web users need tounderstand the importance of investing time in developing their information behaviors
and searching skills to more effectively use complex Web searching tools.
Our research is continuing with large scale data from Alta Vista that we willcompare with findings from other Web search engines.
Acknowledgment
We thank Excite.com and Per Gunan Auran of FAST No. in the provision of Web query
data sets.
References
Montgomery, A., & Faloutsos, C. (2001). Identifying web browsing trends and patterns.
IEEE Computer (July, 2001), 94-95.

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Silverstein, C., Henzinger, M., Marais, H., & Moricz, M. (1999). Analysis of a Very
Large Web Search Engine Query Log. Association for Computing Machinery, Special
Interest Group on Information Retrieval (ACM SIGIR) Forum, 33, 3.
Spink, A., Batemen, J., & Jansen, B. J. (1999). Searching the Web: Survey of Excite
users. Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy, 9(2), 117-128.
Spink, A., Jansen, B. J., Wolfram, D., & Saracevic, T. From e-sex to e-commerce: Web
searching changes. IEEE Computer, 35(3), 107-109.
Spink, A., Ozmutlu, H. C., & Ozmutlu, S. (2002). Multitasking information seeking andsearching processes. Journal of the American Society for Information Science andTechnology, 53(8), 639-652.