Here is my Query, where are my Results? A Search Log Analysis of The EOWEB Geoportal

Abstract. With the rapid growth of available earth observation data and the rising demand to offer web-based data portals, there is a growing need to offer powerful search capabilities to efficiently locate the data products of interest. Many such web-based data portals have been developed with vastly different search interfaces and capabilities. Up to now, there is no general consensus within the community how such a search interface should look like nor exists a detailed analysis of the user’s search behavior when interacting with such a data portal.

In this paper we present a detailed analysis of user’s search behavior based on a log analysis of a real earth observation data portal and generalize our findings to recommendations for future data portal search frontends to improve the overall user experience and increase the search quality.