Explaining search results

Abstract

In this paper we argue that it may be possible to help searchers to better understand the relevance of search results by generating explanations that highlight how other users have interacted with such results under similar search conditions in the past. We propose the use of the search histories of a community of online users as a source of these explanations. We describe the results of a recent study to examine the use of such explanation-based techniques to help Web searchers better appreciate the relevancy of search results. We highlight shortcomings of this approach in its current form and offer suggestions as to how it may be improved in future work. 1