How does search behavior change as search becomes more difficult?

TLDR

Search engines facilitate fact‑checking, yet locating certain types of information remains challenging, a finding that adds to prior research on successful search strategies. The study aimed to identify behavioral signals indicating user difficulty during search tasks. The authors first conducted a lab study with 23 users to observe behavioral changes during struggle, then validated these observations in a large‑scale experiment with 179 participants completing an average of 22.3 tasks from a 100‑task pool. Quantitative analysis confirmed that users experiencing difficulty formulate more diverse queries, employ advanced operators more frequently, and spend longer on result pages than in successful searches.

Abstract

Search engines make it easy to check facts online, but finding some specific kinds of information sometimes proves to be difficult. We studied the behavioral signals that suggest that a user is having trouble in a search task. First, we ran a lab study with 23 users to gain a preliminary understanding on how users' behavior changes when they struggle finding the information they're looking for. The observations were then tested with 179 participants who all completed an average of 22.3 tasks from a pool of 100 tasks. The large-scale study provided quantitative support for our qualitative observations from the lab study. When having difficulty in finding information, users start to formulate more diverse queries, they use advanced operators more, and they spend a longer time on the search result page as compared to the successful tasks. The results complement the existing body of research focusing on successful search strategies.