For most people web search engines (SEs) are the starting point for their exploration of web content, yet they know very little about them. Lewandowski highlights that while technical development is fast and lots of research is published in the technical area of SEs, there is still only limited understanding of the user, the searching process, and the societal impact of SEs, emphasizing that research on Web SEs and their impact is still in its infancy.
This book brings together researchers from different fields, aiming to stimulate research looking beyond the obvious research questions and methods of one's own discipline. It consists of 11 chapters (one introductory chapter focusing on giving an overview of the context of web search and SE related research, plus ten chapters distributed into three parts). Part 1, “Emerging areas of web searching” (three chapters) discusses some aspects of web searching like social search, local search, and forecasting via analyzing the search queries transacted by SEs. The chapters included here help to enable and facilitate the end‐searchers' potential to appreciate the potential quality and quantity of different SEs as information retrieval systems. Part 2, “Beyond traditional search engine evaluation” (four chapters), reviews traditional measures as well as evaluation criteria of SEs, and by focusing on new appraisal methods deals with diversity in Web search, personalized SEs evaluation based on an individual's needs, and rank correlation. The evaluative studies reported in part 2 promise an improvement in human interaction with Web‐based knowledge through SEs. In recent years it has become obvious that search would not continue to encompass only a user entering a query and then selecting results from a ranked list, so Part 3, “New perspectives on web searching” (three chapters) takes a “beyond search” approach that considers Search in a wider framework. Its chapters show that the search process via SEs from beginning to retrieval is influenced by other non‐query‐based factors including users' motives, SE interfaces, etc. Moreover, the necessity of rethinking SE research conceptually and methodologically is emphasized. Hopefully, “indexing” which concerns the infrastructure of the searching process and helps us to understand the process of searching will become more considered as a result. Altogether, through a combination of technical and other perspectives, and by keeping a balance between theory and practice, this work as a textbook and guidebook contributing to a deeper understanding of SE research. As an innovative investigation into the heterogeneous and highly dynamic context of the web SEs this edited work can present students, professors, researchers, end‐users, or SEs optimizers with good information about theory, practice, and above all, research.
