Search Engine Behavior and Satisfaction of Arab Students from a User Perspective
Annegret M. Gross
International Journal of Computational Linguistics Research, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2014.
DOI: 
Link: http://www.dline.info/jcl/fulltext/v5n3/2.pdf
Abstract:
With the birth of the internet in the 1990â€™s, society grew used to turn to the internet as first port of information. Search engines play a major role in finding the desired information among the billions of websites available and are one of the most used services online. The effectiveness of search engines has already been evaluated in numerous studies and under many different aspects. However, only few studies touch upon search engine evaluation from a user perspective, and even less studies from a user perspective of speakers of a specific language. This study aims at shedding more light on
search engine usage from the perspective of Arab users. A survey made among 70 Arab students in Jordan reveals new aspects of search behavior and user satisfaction. The study assesses the frequency of search engine usage, preferred search
engines, and user priorities for search engine selection. It investigates language preferences such as search language and search engine language interface, and user opinion on the quality of English search results versus Arabic search results. User satisfaction with search engine results, contentment with first page search results as well as the perceived necessity for several searches and query paraphrasing are being discussed. Some of these aspects are being examined in this study for the first time. Where possible, the study draws parallels to comparable international research as well as to the few
available studies on Arab users.