Search Query Researcher Amanda Spink

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If you start looking at papers about how searches interact with search engines, and what the queries they use are like, you start seeing the name Amanda Spink showing up repeatedly. She’s written a number of papers on the topic that provide some interesting insights into the subject.

Christina Wodtke conducted an interview recently with Amanda Spink at Boxes and Arrows titled Long Tails and Short Queries: An Interview with Amanda Spink. She touches upon some complex search behavior by searches that is becoming more common place, such as searching for different topics in the same search session – identified as multitasking search. She also raises an interesting point about the length of search boxes, and surmises that we might see longer and more complex queries being used by people if the search boxes were longer. (via Gwen at Internet News).

Some excellent papers by Amanda Spink, worth a look:

• From E-Sex to Commerce: Web Search Changes (pdf) – Discusses changes in queries over time, from user queries collected at Excite in 1997, 1999, and 2001.

• Towards an evolutionary perspective for human information behavior An exploratory study (no longer available at the link I had, but still worth looking for) – A look at the information behavior of various individuals from the past such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Darwin, Giacomo Casanova, Booker T. Washington, Sigmund Freud, and others.

• Human Information Behavior: Integrating Diverse Approaches and Information Use (no longer available at the link I had, and this one requires a fee.) – Like the previous paper, this looks at the ways that people find, collect, organize, and use information. This differs in that it doesn’t look at historical figures or works that they had written, but instead explores the field of Human Information Behavior and a number of key studies.

Other interesting recent interviews

Interview with internet marketers:

• Interview with Lee Odden, conducted by Neil Patel
• Todd Malicoat Interviewed , from Darren McLaughlin
• Interview with Chris Pirillo, by Lee Odden

How much might an SEO from Novosibirsk, Russia have in common with an SEO from Boulder, Colorado? Both share a dedicated commitment to quality in design and communication, as well as SEO, as you can tell in their recent interviews of each other:

• Interview with Steven Bradley (vangogh)
• Interview With Guest Blogger Yuri Filimonov

Interviews from the search side:

• Interview with Eric Case of Google (no longer available)
• Bill Gates interviews the son of the President of Nigeria (via Valley Wag)

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