Identification of factors predicting clickthrough in Web searching using neural network analysis

In this research, we aim to identify factors that significantly affect the clickthrough of Web searchers. Our underlying goal is determine more efficient methods to optimize the clickthrough rate. We devise a clickthrough metric for measuring customer satisfaction of search engine results using the number of links visited, number of queries a user submits, and rank of clicked links. We use a neural network to detect the significant influence of searching characteristics on future user clickthrough. Our results show that high occurrences of query reformulation, lengthy searching duration, longer query length, and the higher ranking of prior clicked links correlate positively with future clickthrough. We provide recommendations for leveraging these findings for improving the performance of search engine retrieval and result ranking, along with implications for search engine marketing

Four Ideas to Improve the Human Condition

A collection of four progressive ideas targeted for the improvement of the human condition has been compiled in this book. They were derived from the first attempted MEDP Australian Summit. Although the Summit itself did not meet expectations for a variety of reasons, the four ideas contained herein are gems derived from the Summit processes.

Introduction

Introduction to "Four Ideas to Improve the Human Condition" edited by Jean-Paul Gagnon.