How Users Search for Information Users of Internet search engines typically ask queries composed of three or fewer words. These short query phrases are frequently incomplete or ambiguous, but the user almost invariably has a particular meaning in mind. Unfortunately, the search engine rarely knows which meaning the user intends, and the information returned by the search engine in the context of the various meanings is probably best displayed in different ways. The problem might be largely solved if only we could identify these various contexts ahead of time. In fact, we can take some fairly large steps in exactly that direction.
Users ask textual queries.
Collecting and analyzing query logs, one notices that many of these queries are specific instances of relatively concrete classes. The set of documents related to the queries in a query class is a very useful concept, and we will use it to define our contexts for searching. We define a vertical slice of information to be a set of documents related to a query class when that collection of documents forms a single context that a large number of users share an interest in. When a query is submitted to a search engine in the context of a particular vertical slice, the set of documents searched and presented to the user is restricted to the documents in that slice. At first glance, it might seem that this would serve end-users poorly by restricting the information to which they have access, but this is not necessarily so.