Search Query Quality and Web-Scale Discovery: A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

This study observes user behavior within the Web-scale discovery tool, Summon by Serials Solutions, at Montana State University. The most common search query within Summon at the time of this study was facebook.com. Two hypotheses are explored: a majority of search queries performed within Summon are of low quality; and search query quality improved during the first two semesters of implementation. Transaction log analysis was performed on a random sample of search queries. Search query quality was consistently high over the first two semesters of implementation, but it did not increase thereafter. Further analysis revealed that users neglected to use Boolean operators.