Search Types

These tutorials are about Information Architecture in Web Design.

Searching Styles

Users have different kinds of information needs and have different ways of trying to fulfill those needs.

If users have different ways of searching and different needs and abilities, this means that there is really no one perfect search engine. Instead search engines are best tailored to the nature of their site's contents and the needs of the anticipated users of the site. In order to understand what makes a good search engine, it helps to understand how people search. We don't have room here for a detailed study of people's search habits on the Web, but we can discuss certain general ways of searching within the context of what people are looking for.

Known-item searching

Known item searching means that you know what you are looking for. For instance, you may keep encountering a word you don't know the meaning of so you decide to look it up in a dictionary. Unless the author is being creative, you know the word exists and that within the context in which it is being used it has a definite meaning. Now all you have to do is find a dictionary that tells you what that meaning is.

Known-item searching has clearly defined goals. It also works on the assumption that there is a single correct answer, or a small set of correct answers. This means that the answer is also clearly defined. Refreshing your memory on existing information is another good example of known item searching.

People engaging in known item searching want to go straight to an answer. They don't want to have to hunt around to find it. Especially if it is information that they have found before. Then they want to be able to go straight back to it.

Existence searching

Existence searching is the process of searching to see if something exists. Going back to our dictionary, if you challenge someone in Scrabble as to whether the word they just used is really a word or not, you are engaging in existence searching.

People engaging in existence searching have clearly defined needs, but do not know whether an answer to the question actually exists. They are not necessarily expecting the answer to be easy to find, and may be willing to work a little harder and explore more avenues than someone searching for know-items. However, they also will not take overly long before deciding that their search will or will not yield results.

Exploratory searching

Exploratory searching is looking for ideas. For instance, you may have been assigned to write an essay on something of your choosing in relation to 13th century Venice. You would then have to explore to see what was out there and come up with ideas on what you could write about, and then see how much information you could find on that specific topic.

Exploratory searching does not have clearly defined needs. Instead the user is trying to put together information on a given topic that may be very vague at the start. It is very conducive to associative learning. As the user explores, they learn about relationships between elements. This often changes the nature of what they are looking for and how they go about looking for it.

People doing exploratory searching want a wide open field to search in, where they can get as much information as possible, and establish as many relationships as possible, and quickly pare them down to the desired sub-set of information they want to work with. As exploratory searching progresses it transforms in its nature into a combination of known item searching and existence searching as the user tries to find more information on a given topic and to fill in the gaps in what they have.

Research

Research is similar to exploratory searching, except that instead of trying to narrow the field, the searcher is tring to expand it, finding and documenting all possible material relating to a given topic.

Research also requires a large filed to work with, but a researcher is more interested in being able to effectively organize the information than in being able to whittle it down to some focused sub-set.

These pages can be found at: [http://academ.hvcc.edu/~kantopet/]
Copyright 2003 -- Peter L. Kantor[kantopet@hvcc.edu]
Last Updated March 2003