Web search engines today typically show results as a list of titles and short snippets that summarize how the retrieved documents are related to the query. However, recent research suggests that longer summaries can be preferable for certain types of queries. This paper presents empirical evidence that judges can predict appropriate search result summary lengths, and that perceptions of search result quality can be affected by varying these result lengths. These findings have important implications for search results presentation, especially for natural language queries.
Kaisser et al. REF found that snippet length should differ dependent on the type of query, providing evidence that users are able to predict the appropriate snippet length and that their perceptions of search result quality are affected accordingly.
Improving Search Results Quality by Customizing Summary Lengths
Annual Meeting Of The Association For Computational Linguistics
Computer Science