Refereed Papers

Track: Mobility

Paper Title:
Deciphering Mobile Search Patterns: A Study of Yahoo! Mobile Search Queries

Authors:

• Jeonghee Yi(Yahoo! Inc.)
• Farzin Maghoul(Yahoo! Inc.)
• Jan Pedersen(Yahoo! Inc.)

Abstract:
In this paper we study the characteristics of search queries submitted from mobile devices using various Yahoo! mobile oneSearch applications during a 2 months period in the second half of 2007, and report the query patterns derived from 20 million English sample queries submitted by users in US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. We examine the query distribution and topical categories the queries belong to in order to find new trends. We compare and contrast the search patterns between US vs international queries, and between queries from various search interfaces (XHTML/WAP, java widgets, and SMS). We also compare our results with previous studies wherever possible, either to confirm previous findings, or to find interesting differences in the query distribution and pattern.

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