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The Web has become a worldwide source of information and a mainstream business tool. Are human information needs and searching behaviors evolving along with Web content? As part of a body of research studying this question, we have analyzed three data sets culled from more than one million queries submitted by more than 200,000 users of the Excite Web search engine, collected in September 1997, December 1999, and May 2001. This longitudinal benchmark study shows that public Web searching is evolving in certain directions. Specifically, search topics have shifted from entertainment and sex to commerce and people, but there is little change in query lengths or frequency per user. Search topics have shifted, but there is little change in user search behaviors.
Spink et al. (Fri,) studied this question.