One week with a corporate search engine: A time-based analysis of intranet information seeking

Paper in proceeding, 2005

In this explorative work, we have focused on understanding information seeking behaviour amongst intranet users. By carrying out a time-based analysis of a week’s worth of log data from a corporate-internal search engine, we have been able to observe patterns of usage as it shifts over days and hours. The results show that numbers of started sessions and activities correlate and follow business hours closely but also that the number of terms per query differs significantly over the day but is constant over the week. The number of active users and the number of sessions are higher early in the week and declines as the week progresses, and we also note that frequent search engine users also log more activities per visit. This study shows that intranet seeking behaviour differs from what is known about public web searching. The main contribution is the baseline for more targeted intranet studies that this study provides.