[re-search] Search engine projects at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences

[Dirk Lewandowski]

Dear colleagues,

At our small research group at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, we’re currently working on several search engine projects:

 

1. Search engine retrieval effectiveness

This is somehow the basic project of our research group. We aim at understanding the quality of search engines’ results, concerning relevancy, and other factors. We already did a lot of empirical studies, and conceptual work, as well.

Contact: dirk.lewandowski at haw-hamburg.de

 

2. Software support for evaluating search engines

For testing search engines, we developed a software called “Relevance Assessment Tool” (RAT), which allows for an easy design of tests, and for easy large-scale data collection, as well. We can collect data from all the popular search engines automatically, and collect jurors’ judgments through controlled crowdsourcing.

For further details, see our publication (in German):

http://www.bui.haw-hamburg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/lewandowski/doc/RAT_DGI_Lewandowski_Suenkler_preprint.pdf

Contact: sebastian.suenkler at haw-hamburg.de

 

3. Contextual advertising on search engine results pages

The basic hypothesis of this project is that a large part of search engine users is not able to distinguish between organic results and advertisements on the search engine results pages of major search engines. The planned study is questionnaire-based, and will be complemented by a lab experiment. Project will start in October.

Contact: N.N., dirk.lewandowski at haw-hamburg.de

 

4. Search engine neutrality

The aim of this project is to gain an understanding of the ways search engines can be “neutral”, and the points where search engine neutrality is at risk (e.g., search engines manipulating organic results, search engines giving suggestions leading to their own offerings). Mainly conceptual work plus an extensive literature.

Contact: dirk.lewandowski at haw-hamburg.de

 

5. Search engines for the disabled

This project deals with barrier-free search engines, and the use of search engines by disabled children and adolescents. The aim is to understand special needs by these groups, and focuses on the wide variety of disabilities.

Contact: friederike.kerkmann at haw-hamburg.de

 

 

See http://www.bui.haw-hamburg.de/publikationen.html for a list of publications (all available as preprints, for the published PDF versions, please contact me).

If you are interested in collaborating with us, we’ll be happy to hearing from you.

 

Best wishes

Dirk



--
Prof. Dr. Dirk Lewandowski
Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg 
(Hamburg University of Applied Sciences)

Fakultät Design Medien Information
Department of Information
Finkenau 35
D - 22081 Hamburg
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 40-42875 3621
Fax: +49 (0) 3222-1445 301
Skype: dirk.lewandowski
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Dirk_Lew
http://www.bui.haw-hamburg.de
http://www.bui.haw-hamburg.de/lewandowski.html

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Associate Editor (Europe), Online Information Review
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1468-4527

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Aktuelles Buch:
Handbuch Internet-Suchmaschinen, Band 2: Neue Entwicklungen in der Web-Suche
http://www.amazon.de/Handbuch-Internet-Suchmaschinen-Neue-Entwicklungen-Web-Suche/dp/3898386511

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New book:
Web Search Engine Research
http://www.amazon.com/Search-Research-Library-Information-Science/dp/1780526369/







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