Impact of Faceted Search on Search Performance of Children

Abstract

Web searching is one of the second most common activities over the Internet. Search engines have revolutionized the way information is pursued . We all know that Google is the most widely used search engine and sets the standards for other search systems. People have become so much used to Google's style of searching that it is really hard for them to adapt to another sty le. But this approach to searching has various issues especially for a certain grol p of the Internet population i.e. chiidren. Chiidren face many difficulties in find ing their desired contents because of the sty le of search engines. It is because children have spec ial ized needs and most search engines are designed for elder people. So th e style of searching which is most popular across the web is not the best one for children . Faceted search is a spec ialized form of searching which a llows the users to search the domain on the basis of its attributes. This quality of fac eted search enco uraged us to apply it to design an interface for children. The objective was to propose such a search system which solves major problems of children which they face while using keyword based search engines. Our hypothesis is that faceted search will help and improve the search performance of children when compared to query based searching. We proposed a faceted search interface to verify our hypothesis. We tested our proposed system with chi ldren and compared the results with keyword based search engine. The results of analysis and comparisons with a query based search system showed that children performed much better on the faceted search interface and most of their problems were solved.