People often use more than one query when searching for information; they also revisit search results to re- nd information. These tasks are not well-supported by search interfaces and web browsers. We designed and built a Chrome browser extension that helps people manage their ongoing information seeking. The extension combines document and process metadata into an interactive representation of the retrieved documents that can be used for sense-making, for navigation, and for re- nding documents.
Broder et al. [
These seemingly neglected activities are not unimportant,
however: Teevan et al. [
We created a web browser extension that enriches common web search engine interfaces and addresses important de cits with respect to open-ended (exploratory) search and re- nding. Our extension visualizes search results to help users nd the right document or documents by visualizing metadata of the retrieved pages.
Following Golovchinsky et al. [
The browser plugin enhances the searcher's ability to use process metadata to understand their search results and to plan subsequent activity by displaying surrogates for the current set of retrieved documents. We represent prior retrieval state, whether a document was opened, and whether it was bookmarked in an integrated overview that appears at the side of the browser window. We also make it possible for searchers to examine multiple documents without returning to the search results or using multiple tabs.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: we review the relevant related work, describe the browser extension, and conclude with a discussion of the design space. 2.
There are two broad categories of related work: the
management of search history and the representation of search
results. Re nding has received increasing attention recently.
While the browser implements some history mechanisms,
these are typically not well-suited to users' needs [
Information overload due to large numbers of results is
a common problem in information seeking [
One potential issue with the systems above is that the overall organization of the interface itself may induce usability problems. Complex interfaces allow more individual settings to be speci ed by a user, but simple interfaces allow a broader spectrum of users to use them. This tradeo is not trivial to handle, and as we see nowadays, most Web search interfaces tend to be quite simple.
Supporting the searcher's decision making process can be
crucial for e ective search performance for complex
information needs. This support can take the form of enhanced
surrogates for documents. One type of information often
used for this purpose is document metadata (author, date,
images of the document, etc.). Even et al. [
Spoerri [
To compensate for the de ciencies of SERPs we created a browser extension called SearchPanel. This extension combines document and process metadata in a visual representation of search results to help people manage their information seeking. We chose the browser extension approach rather than creating a proxy for several reasons. While both o er the potential of parsing and augmenting SERP and document pages, a browser extension has some advantages. It scales better with respect to storing user history data. It ensures a higher level of data privacy, since data that might potentially reveal user interests (e.g., query keywords, selected URLs, etc.) can be logged as hashed values. Finally, it has access to bookmarks and local browsing history. 3.1
When performing search tasks, searchers may need di erent kinds of information to support their information seeking. We represent the design space as consisting of three categories of activities: search activity, navigation activity, and organization activity.
Historically, web UI support for the search process, or search activity, has been focused on query formulation and understanding the current query. Web browsers o er limited support for comparing current results set with earlier activity by marking the visited status of documents.
When engaged with a search task, users need to shift their attention between the SERP and the retrieved pages. In some cases, the searcher does not nd the desired information in a retrieved document, but rather in links to other documents containing relevant information. This navigation activity can be an important part of the information seeking process.
When searchers nd useful web pages, they may wish to save those documents for future access. More specialized search engines sometimes support this capability directly, but it is most often supported only by the browser's bookmarking capability.
We can consider these search and sense-making activities in light of the kinds of information required to satisfy them. In particular, Table 1 shows when document and process metadata might be pertinent for the di erent categories of search activities. A representation of the number of visits to a retrieved result (process metadata) could be used by a searcher to decide how to interact with that result. In a rending sub task, for example, searchers might want to ignore newly-found documents or pages that were not opened.
The purpose of the search panel is to complement the SERP and to be available when exploring search results; we wanted the design to be simple and unobtrusive but still convey useful information. Some features (e.g., organizating bookmarks) listed in Table 1 are too complex to be integrated into the extension. Others, such as favicons, while seemingly trivial, may still provide useful information for navigating search results. 3.2
SearchPanel displays automatically on the right side of the browser window when it is enabled (Figure 1). The right side of the content page has been chosen because this location is frequently free of document content. In cases of overlap, its vertical position can be adjusted manually to accommodate page content that may be occluded.
SearchPanel displays immediately after a search has been performed on a supported web search engine (currently, they are Google, Google Scholar, Yahoo, Bing and Microsoft Academic Search). SearchPanel remains visible even if the searcher follows links from retrieved documents. In addition, searchers can return directly to the original query, or re-run it on a di erent search engine.
A short tutorial page is displayed at installation, and can also be reached through the option menu. This page also allows logging (see 3.2.4) to be disabled, and can be used to delete the recorded history. 3.2.1
1The Wayback Machine is a service that provides access to archived and historical versions of web sites.
SearchPanel displays several kinds of document metadata. Documents are represented by bars arranged in order correa newly-found page; 3 favicon representing the site from which the page was retrieved; 4 bar representing page that has been visited; 5 highlighted bar based on cursor position; 6 bookmark indicator; 7 currently-selected page. sponding to the retrieved list; clicking on a bar is equivalent to clicking on a link on the SERP. Almost all websites have icons (favicons) to help re-identify the web page quickly; these icons are shown to the right of the bar (see Figure 1, item 3 ). A tooltip with the title of the document is added to each bar as well. We considered identifying other metadata such as document MIME type, but that would incur the overhead of a separate HTTP request for each document. At least initially, we chose not to pursue this strategy. 3.2.2
Process metadata is also incorporated into SearchPanel. First, the icon of the search engine that ran the search is highlighted in the top bar (item 1 ). Other icons represent available comparable search engines. Clicking on one of these icons re-runs the query with the selected search engine. Search engines are grouped into two categories (web search and academic research) and only the relevant ones are shown. The current selection (highlighted with a black border) links back to the search result page if the user navigates to one of the retrieved documents.
Each bar can have one of three di erent colors, depending on the link history. If a link has never been retrieved before, the state of the link is "new" and the color will be teal. Results that have been retrieved by prior queries but have not been clicked on are colored blue. Visited links are colored violet. The local browser history is examined to retrieve the link status. This allows us to incorporate page views that occurred before SearchPanel was installed.
Each bar's length re ects the frequency of retrieval of the corresponding page. The more frequently a page has been retrieved, the shorter the bar gets (item 3 ). The retrieval history is stored locally in the browser for privacy reasons and can be deleted through SearchPanel's option page.
In SearchPanel, the bookmarking function serves two purposes (item 6 in Figure 1). First, searchers can click on the star to bookmark the corresponding page. Second, previously bookmarked documents in the SERP will show a yellow star next to them. This allows to re- nd a web page quicker, as the user does not need to navigate to a document to know if they have previously bookmarked it. 3.2.3
The selection indicator (see item 7 in Figure 1) indicates the currently-selected result page. If a link on a result page is clicked, the page indicator will stay on the last retrieved document page to indicate that navigation started with it. Hovering over the result highlights the associated bar (item 5 ), and also highlights the corresponding snippet in the SERP (Figure 2); the SERP is scrolled as necessary to bring highlighted snippet into view. Conversely, when the mouse is over a snippet on the SERP, the related bar jiggles leftright to reinforce the connection between the two.
When the user navigates o the SERP to a search result, SearchPanel remains active. Clicking on bars navigates among the retrieved documents, bypassing the intermediate step of reloading the search results. When the mouse is over a bar in SearchPanel, the SERP snippet of that result will be shown. This can be seen in Figure 3, where a preview of the Wolfram Alpha snippet is shown. If the snippet is not available, a tooltip with the document title is shown instead. Both of these features should make it easier and more e cient to navigate the search results without necessarily creating a large number of tabs in the process. 3.2.4
The extension was created to study people's information seeking behaviors. The goal of the project is to understand how people use the web when looking for information to improve their search experience. Therefore logging of user activity was necessary. To encapsulate it from the basic functionality it was designed as plugin that could be connected or disconnected from SearchPanel. It collects information related to the use of SearchPanel for the purposes of statistical analysis of patterns of behavior.
To maximize searchers' privacy, no personally-identifying information is saved. Queries and found URLs are recorded as MD5-hashed values only. This allows us to identify recurring queries and documents, without being able to read the content of the query or to observe which pages people view. Speci cally, the following information is recorded: The IP address and the time the event was logged When a search result was clicked and where this happened (SearchPanel or SERP) Hash strings that represent the queries and found web pages.
Time spent with the mouse on di erent interface parts (SearchPanel vs SERP) Various actions related to the extension (adding bookmarks by clicking the start, moving it, etc.).
After an in-house pilot deployment, SearchPanel has been made available through the Google Chrome store. The goal of the deployment is to understand whether the extension helps people with their search tasks, and to assess the relative utility of document vs. process metadata. We also expect to collect a dataset that characterizes people's browsing and searching behaviors in terms of patterns of retrieval and re-retrieval, search result navigation, etc.
Web search engines are used for many di erent kinds of search tasks. While navigational and transactional uses of search engines are well-supported by current interfaces and algorithms, searchers are left to their own devices for more open-ended information seeking and re- nding. We created a Google Chrome browser extension to help people manage their search activity. We explored the design space of document and process metadata related to the wide range of activities searchers may engage in during information seeking. The extension keeps track of retrieval, page visits, and bookmarking, and integrates traces of these activities with document metadata to give people a more complete impression of their search activity. An upcoming deployment will explore the e ect that this extension has on how people interact with search results.