Web information seeking by pages: an observational study of moving and stopping

The intention of this paper is to look at how the World Wide Web is used in looking for information in the domain of personal development. The theoretical aim of the paper is to elaborate conceptual tools for understanding better the content of Web pages, as well as navigation through the Web. To obtain detailed and valid data, totally free-form Web searches by 15 individuals were observed and videotaped. The 1,812 pages visited by the informants, along with their actions therein, were examined and coded. The study explores the subject, language and content type of the viewed pages, as well as the tactics, strategies, interfaces and revisitation in moving from one page to another. Correlations between the variables are also analysed. One of the most interesting discoveries was the wide variety of different tactics for moving around the Web, albeit that only clicking on links and pushing the Back button stood out from the rest. The paper ends by presenting sundry theoretical, methodological and practical contributions of the research to the field of Web searching.