Users must be cautioned that THE TOOLS ARE STILL
PRONE TO ERROR due largely to ambiguities in natural-language
processing and high computational costs.
subject and the number of all results found by the
same subject or by an expert. Domain experts provided answers for judging the subjects’ browse-task
performance. After using a system, a subject filled out
a questionnaire with comments and satisfaction ratings on a seven-point Likert scale.
In the CBizPort experiment with 30 Chinese sub-
jects from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
and with three Chinese business academics and prac-
titioners serving as experts, the results show that the
effectiveness of existing Chinese search engines can be
improved significantly by adding
CBizPort. However, no significant Portal
difference was found in the effec- Research
questions
tiveness of the summarizer and
categorizer in the Chinese portal
and in their user-satisfaction rat- Languages
ings. Despite this, 11 subjects
commented that the summarizer
and categorizer facilitated their
understanding and searching. Regions
These results indicate that CBizPort could augment these search
engines in searching and browsing
Chinese business information but
also that the summarizer and cat- Result
egorizer need further improve- highlights
ment in precision and browse
support.
In the SBizPort experiment
with 19 Spanish subjects from six
countries—Colombia, Mexico,
Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, and
the U.S.—and a veteran Spanish
business consultant serving as the
expert, the SOM visualizer achieved significantly better browse effectiveness than BIWE, the benchmark
search engine, showing that the tool helps alleviate
information overload and supports browsing effectively. The use of a domain-specific collection
achieved higher mean accuracy and search efficiency
than not using it, though the differences were not significant. Subjects rated SBizPort significantly better
than BIWE, citing the precision and relevance of
returned results. These results further indicate that the
information-visualization tool can be an alternative to
presenting search results as text in a list.
In the AMedPort experiment with 11 Arab subjects
from five countries—Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, and Morocco—and an Arab microbiology
researcher serving as the expert, the AMedPort
achieved a significantly higher mean accuracy, efficiency, and satisfaction rating than (and comparable
browse effectiveness to) Ayna, the benchmark search
CBizPort SBizPort AMedPort
• How does the framework support Web searching in a multilingual world?
• How can Web searching and browsing be made more effective by using the portals developed
by the framework?
• What are the lessons learned and implications for non-English Web searching?
Traditional Chinese is used in Hong Spanish is used in many Arabic is used in more than
Kong and Taiwan, while simplified regions and countries in 22 countries in the Middle
Chinese is used in mainland China. North and South Americas East and North Africa. It is
They have different encoding and Europe; Catalan (another written from right to left.
formats. Word segmentation is version of Spanish) is widely Web content in Arabic is
a problem. used as well. generally not rich.
Mainland China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Lebanon, Saudi Arabia,
Tai wan Rica, Panama, Colombia, Bahrain, Canada, Tunisia,
Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Kuwait, Egypt, Switzerland,
Chile, Argentina, Spain, United Arab Emirates,
Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Russia, U.K., U.S.
Guatemala, Nicaragua, U.S.
BIWE.com Ayna.com
Benchmarks Sina.com.cn, Openfind.
com.t w, HK.yahoo.com
CBizPort’s meta-searching,
summarization, and categorization
are helpful for searching and
browsing Chinese Web pages in
the three regions. CBizPort needs
improvement on search
precision and information quality.
SBizPort achieved a better
browse performance and
satisfaction rating than the
benchmark but needs to be
improved on its domain-specific collection.
AMedPort achieved better
search accuracy than
comparable browse
performance in Ayna.
AMedPort obtains better
user ratings in user
satisfaction.
Table 2. Experimental
studies on developing
Web search portals in
various languages.
engine. Nine subjects said AMedPort was useful and
provided more topics and information than the
benchmark. The portal provided high-quality information from many sources but needs improvement in
both its summarizer and categorizer.
There was a probability of 0.05 (or less) that the
confirmed results were actually not statistically valid
in the experiments in which the best search engines in
the respective languages were used as benchmarks.
LESSONS LEARNED