The Search Studies Group at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences

Abstract

We present an overview of the work of the Search Studies research group, focusing on commercial search engines from a user perspective. This encompasses studying what users of these search engines get to see on the result pages, how users interact with search engines, and the effect both have on knowledge acquisition in society. Our research combines search engine data analysis, by collecting and analysing data from commercial search engines (data science), with understanding information-seeking behaviour through conducting user studies in different settings (information science), ranging from large, representative online surveys to behavioural studies in the lab employing, amongst others, eye-tracking.