“W HERE ’ D IT GO ?” Jaime Teevan Microsoft Research

“W HERE ’ D IT GO ?” Study how people re-find Difficulties people actually encountered Collected via a Web search Look at how people: Described what they were looking for Answered “Where’d it go?” Coordinated use with other people Explore ramifications for system design

“W HERE ’ D IT GO ?” Example observation: I remember when I first joined these forums! There were little “Did you know” facts about Star Wars at the front page, but they were replaced with movie quotes! Why did they disappear? Describes frustration, location, time Wants an explanation as an answer Facts removed because seeker’s needs not coordinated with others

U NDERSTANDING R E -F INDING Re-finding common on the Web 60%-80% of Web page visits are re-visits [Tauscher & Greenberg 1997, Cockburn et al. 2002] 40% of search queries involve re-finding [Teevan et al. 2007] Commonly a problem on the Web “Not being able to return to a visited page” [GVU 1998] Support for re-finding Search engines, bookmarks, history

R E -F INDING IN A D YNAMIC W EB Web content changes a lot [Fetterly et al. 2003, Obendorf et al. 2007] Re-finding is harder when things change Bookmarks break [Hupp & Miller 2007] Untrusted repository [Whittaker & Hirshberg 2001] Even when not impossible, can make it harder

S TUDYING R E - FINDING IS HARD Log analysis Pro: Naturalistic behavior Con: No intent Controlled studies Need to create re-finding situations [Bruce, Jones & Dumais 2004] [Capra & Pérez-Quiñones 2005] Can we get insight into real world difficulties people encounter?

A PPROACH : A NALYZE W EB P AGES Gather Web pages indicative of troubles Collected via a Web search Query: “Where’d it go?” Analyze and code pages

A PPROACH : A NALYZE W EB P AGES Gather Web pages indicative of troubles Collected via a Web search Query: “Where’d it go?” Other studies of Web content Robotic pets [Friedman et al. 2003] Injury recovery [Preece 1998] Personal data [Good & Krekelberg 2003]

P AGES C ONTAINING “W HERE ’ D IT GO ?” Message boards Web logs (blogs) Redirect pages Articles FAQs Other

FormatTotal Information Target RhetoricalResponse WebDigitalOther 404/Redirect Web log Article FAQ/Help Message Board Other Total O VERVIEW OF D ATA C OLLECTED

S UMMARY OF F INDINGS Analyzed data to see how people: Described what they were looking for Answered “Where’d it go?” Coordinated use with other people FormatTotal Information Target RhetoricalResponse WebDigitalOther 404/Redirect Web log Article FAQ/Help Message Board Other Total

D ESCRIBING THE M ISSING I NFO Expressions of frustration Ah *pulls out masses of hair* Where'd it go?!?! Blame self: I think I am going crazy. Shared context I noticed it was missing too! Path important Ok, where’s the link? Provide info on the demise of.. the.. newspaper. Time is relative Recently….

A NSWERING “W HERE ’ D IT GO ?” Explanations I’ve removed the pages I used to have here. Maybe Eric didn’t pay his.. hosting fee? If Spike doesn’t like.. a post, he’ll take it out. Work-arounds I found it, or something better… Resolutions Most often provided by the changer I moved it to the bug reports forum.

C OORDINATING M ULTIPLE U SERS People had different intentions I think they got removed because there were only about three of them and they got old fast Did not want others to see information I was hoping nobody saw it, oops. I got taken in by that Metallica spoof going around the net. Found out it was a parody and deleted it. Copyright issues Wanted others to see information

D ESIGN I MPLICATIONS Important to archive Web content Described the missing information Key into archive by location, relative time Answered “Where’d it go?” Explanations valuable if archive impossible Answers most useful where change occurred Coordinated use with other people Personalization Awareness of what others see

C ONCLUSIONS Studied how people re-find on the Web Difficulties people actually encountered Collected via a Web search Looked at how people: Described what they were looking for Answered “Where’d it go?” Coordinated use with other people Explored ramifications for system design

F UTURE D IRECTIONS Understand re-finding behavior better Log analysis of re-visitation Analysis of content changes Additional studies of re-finding behavior Support re-finding better Caching systems Re:Search Engine Highlighting changes

T HANK YOU ! Jaime Teevan, MSR