How questions are posed to a search engine? An empiricial analysis of question queries in a large scale Persian search engine log

Abstract

In this paper we investigate a Persian search engine log and present a comprehensive analysis of question queries in three levels: structure, click and topic. By analyzing question queries characteristics, we explore behavior of Persian language users. Our experimental results show that question queries length are larger than normal queries. Most of these queries contained question words "How" and "What" and their topics were mainly about health, policy, religion and society.