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HotMap: Supporting visual exploration of Web search results

Although information retrieval techniques used by Web search engines have improved substantially over the years, the results of Web searches have continued to be represented in simple list-based formats. Although the list-based representation makes it easy to evaluate a single document for relevance, it does not support the users in the broader tasks of manipulating or exploring the search results as they attempt to find a collection of relevant documents. HotMap is a meta-search system that provides a compact visual representation of Web search results at two levels of detail, and it supports interactive exploration via nested sorting of Web search results based on query term frequencies. An evaluation of the search results for a set of vague queries has shown that the re-sorted search results can provide a higher portion of relevant documents among the top search results. User studies show an increase in speed and effectiveness and a reduction in missed documents when comparing HotMap to the list-based representation used by Google. Subjective measures were positive, and users showed a preference for the HotMap interface. These results provide evidence for the utility of next-generation Web search results interfaces that promote interactive search results exploration. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.