[Siguse-l] Search engine query log

[Peiling Wang]

I am glad to hear that you are interested in Web query logs. These are
valuable data for understanding how users formulate their searches.

To my best knowledge, today's search engines keep log files of submitted
queries (other data such as access), but these files are usually not
public accessible, neither are they archived. Therefore, you will need to
make arrangements with the Website to get these log files before the
system automatically deletes them.

I wonder if Web TREC has files on Web query logs as standard collections
for research. It perhaps worth exploring.

I am not sure what you will do with the query logs, so I am blindly
pointing a few published studies for your references.

I have ananlyzed longitudinal Web querys logged in a university Website.
It was through special arrangement to have the system export the log files
on a regular basis. A JASIST paper is coming out next issue. Mining
longitudinal web queries: Trends and patterns by Peiling Wang, Michael W.
Berry, Yiheng Yang.

Several other papers also report on Web query analysis (Excite, AltaVista,
etc.). I believe the researchers do have these query data and they may be
willing to share. You can contact the authors:

Silverstein, C., Henzinger, M., Marais, H., & Moricz, M. (1999). Analysis
of a very large Web search engine query log. SIGIR Forum , 33(1), 6-12.

Spink, A., Wolfram, D., Jansen, B.J., & Saracevic, T. (2001). Searching
the Web: the public and their queries. Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology , 52(3), 226-234.

Best regards,

Peiling Wang, Ph.D.                 |  *******************************
Associate Professor                 |   TO TEACH IS TO LEARN AGAIN
School of Information Sciences      |   TO RESEARCH IS TO SEE BEYOND
University of Tennessee             |  *******************************
Knoxville, TN 37996, U.S.A.         |
(865)974-3700; Fax: (865) 974-4967  |
HTTP://web.utk.edu/~peilingw        |

>Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 13:53:34 +0200 (CEST)
>From: Jean-Yves Delort <Jean-Yves.Delort at lip6.fr>
>To: siguse-l at asis.org, sighci-l at asis.org
>Subject: [Siguse-l] Search engine query log
>
>
>Hello,
>
>It is very hard to find search engine query log on the Web...
>
>I am looking for search engines such as Excite, Lycos and even
>local to a country search engines. Do you have any clues about
>where I could find them ?
>
>Jack Xu who worked at Excite had put on the web one day Excite
>queries log ftp://ftp.excite.com/pub/jack/Excite.Log.12201999.gz
>
>but it is no longer available.
>
>Also, uf you have heared about "big" proxy server log (like that I could
>extract the users' queries) in which user's requests haven't been removed
>and could say it to me I would be very grateful.
>
>Many thanks by advance
>
>Best regards
>
>Jean-Yves Delort
>
>
>
>
>*************************************
>PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS :
>LIP6, Pole IA
>8 rue du Capitaine Scott
>75015 Paris, France
>
>(metro station :  Dupleix or Bir Hakeim)
>
>telephone (33) 1 44 27 88 02, fax (33) 1 44 27 70 00
>Web: http://webia.lip6.fr/~delort
>
>e-mail address : Jean-Yves.Delort at lip6.fr
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Siguse-l mailing list
>Siguse-l at asis.org
>http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/siguse-l
>