Evaluating implicit measures to improve web search

Models user satisfaction with a query or with an entire search trail using features extracted by instrumenting the browser.

Potential useful implicit feedback includes: examination (looking at a page), retention (bookmarking a page), and reference from [Oaard and Kim 1998]. Features included dwelling time, scrolls, position of a click in the result set, exit type, image count in target page, etc.

Two important features are dwelling time and exit-type. Printing and bookmarking are correlated with satisfaction too but they are very rare.

Also uses "gene analysis" (similar to the general patterns of [Catledge and Pitkow 1995]). These are general patterns such as query-resultspage-click-resultspage-click-exit or query-resultspage-click-exit. A single query-resultspage-click-exit is a good predictor of satisfaction.