A task-oriented study on the influencing effects of query-biased summarisation in web searching

• Published in: Information processing & management Vol. 39; no. 5; pp. 707 - 733
• Main Authors: White, Ryen W., Jose, Joemon M., Ruthven, Ian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-09-2003; Elsevier Science; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: AltaVista; Comparative Analysis; Effects; Exact sciences and technology; Information and communication sciences; Information processing and retrieval; Information Retrieval; Information retrieval. Man machine relationship; Information science. Documentation; Information Systems; Online information retrieval; Online Searching; Query formulation; Query Formulations; Query Processing; Relevance (Information Retrieval); Research process. Evaluation; Sciences and techniques of general use; Search Engines; Searching; Strategies; Studies; Summarization; World Wide Web; Evaluation; Automation; Query; Abstract; Search engine; World wide web; Information retrieval; Internet; Performance
• ISSN: 0306-4573; 1873-5371
• DOI: 10.1016/S0306-4573(02)00033-X

The aim of the work described in this paper is to evaluate the influencing effects of query-biased summaries in web searching. For this purpose, a summarisation system has been developed, and a summary tailored to the user’s query is generated automatically for each document retrieved. The system aims to provide both a better means of assessing document relevance than titles or abstracts typical of many web search result lists. Through visiting each result page at retrieval-time, the system provides the user with an idea of the current page content and thus deals with the dynamic nature of the web.
To examine the effectiveness of this approach, a task-oriented, comparative evaluation between four different web retrieval systems was performed; two that use query-biased summarisation, and two that use the standard ranked titles/abstracts approach. The results from the evaluation indicate that query-biased summarisation techniques appear to be more useful and effective in helping users gauge document relevance than the traditional ranked titles/abstracts approach. The same methodology was used to compare the effectiveness of two of the web’s major search engines; AltaVista and Google.