This thesis was built on a practical work for LM Ericsson Data AB and deals with how toexamine an information need for a limited department within the corporation using aqualitative interview method.The thesis deals with how to search for requested information on the Internet and the WorldWide Web (WWW). It contains a model and a method for evaluation of search engines onthe World Wide Web, and 16 search engines which primarily indexes the World Wide Webare being evaluated..

The web has made an incredible amount of unorganized information available to anyone. There are search engines that help us structuring the information, but it is still difficult to find what you search for on the web. The purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate whether the already existing techniques for automatic indexing are suited for the new information retrieval context on the web and how the choice to support these techniques, or not, affects the Search Results. This is examined through a literature study on automatic indexing and other related concepts, such as information retrieval and information searching on the web in order to get a theoretical frame to the work and by an observation of the search engine HotBot to approach the purpose of the thesis. The observation is carried out by searching HotBot's database and investigating the Search Results in order to try to identify patterns that can reveal something about how HotBot's automatic indexing is done.

This paper is a literature study on search engine optimization (SEO) considering the leader of the search engine market: Google. There´s an introductory background description of Google and its methods of  crawling the Internet and indexing the web pages, along with a brief review of the famous PageRank algorithm. The purpose of this paper is to describe the major important methods for improved rankings on Google´s result lists. These methods could be categorized as on-page methods tied to the website to be optimized or off-page methods that are external to the website such as link development. Furthermore the most common unethical methods are described, known as ?black hat?, which is the secondary purpose of the text.

With the technological development of the last decades, an increasing number of genealogists are carrying out their research online. The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how and why genealogists' information behavior has been influenced by the use of online services for genealogy. Using a conceptual model of genealogists' information behavior as theoretical basis for the study, I examine how the use of online services affect genealogists? search process, what information they are looking for and what information resources they use.

The purpose of this essay is to perform an evaluation regarding retrieval performance of three web search engines. The search engines included are All the Web, Alta Vista and Google. These have been tested using ten queries within different subject areas chosen by the author. The first twenty hits for each question have been analyzed for relevancy. Relevancy is judged on a three-point scale; 0, 0,5 and 1 where 0 goes to irrelevant and inactive or duplicate documents, 0,5 point goes to partially relevant documents and 1 point goes to highly relevant documents.

The buying decision process describes how the consumer makes a purchase decision through a rational process (Markin, 1979) and an understanding for how consumers make a purchase decision can according to Sands et al. (2010) be obtained by increased knowledge for the information search process (the second part of the buying decision process) before a purchase. Today?s society offers great opportunity to obtain information (Rahim & Clemens, 2012; Bawden & Robinson, 2009) and by that there are in other words good opportunities for a rational acting by the consumers. However, there are factors working against that consumers act rationally and seek information prior to their purchases primarily in the form of the concept of information overload (Bawden & Robinson, 2009) which claims that consumers are limited in their information search because there is too much information but also other factors such as lack of time (Wood & Neal, 2009) and ability to find information (Slegers et al.

The Internet offers an abundance of information. This information is easy to access in technical terms, however it is difficult to find. At present there is a wide variety of search services to choose from. This master's thesis is about selecting the appropriate search service for a certain question. Are different types of services suitable for different types of questions, and if so, which services for which questions?To answer this, I have undertaken one theoretical and one empirical study.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to analyze if there is a correlation between stock prices and the amount of searches of the companies names on Google. The theories used in the study were Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). Regressions analysis is used as the statistical method to see if there is a significant correlation between the stock prices and the amout of searches of the company name on Google. The data used were the rate of return of three companies (ABB, Oriflame and Sandvik) on the Nasdaq OMX Nordic stock market, the rate of return of the Nasdaq OMX Nordic stock market index (OMX Stockholm_PI) and the Google search frequency from Google Trends on each company. The result showed no significance and the conclusion of the thesis is that there is no significant correlation between the three studied companies and their search frequency on the search engine Google..

The question whether controlled vocabulary or natural language free-text terms is the most effective search strategy has occupied researchers in LIS for many decades. This Masters thesis is an empirical study which aims to compare these two search strategies in LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts, an online bibliographic database. 22 topics from the discipline of Library and Information Science were constructed and out of each topic one query for each search strategy was formed. Queries in natural language were formed with terms from different sources, for example dictionaries, while queries in controlled vocabulary were built with terms from LISAs electronic thesaurus. The measures used in this study were precision, relative recall pooling method and overlap.

The aim of this thesis was to study librarians approach upon reference questions and available resources and also to find out if there is any connection between the nature of the reference question and the choice of resource. The purpose was also to give a deeper understanding of the reference work. Nine librarians were given ten reference questions and their reference work was tape recorded. The study was completed with seven interviews sent by email. Some of the reflections were translated under the headlines of form, subject, time, language and availability.

The web is getting more and more characterized by personalization. Big socialnetworks like Facebook as well as the leading search engine Google increasingly usepersonalization algorithms to tailor the information that they present to users. All inorder to make the information more relevant and engaging for the end consumer. Howdoes this personalization affect journalists who increasingly search the web as a partof their journalistic research? In this essay we have looked at the effects thatpersonalization has on the journalists of tomorrow by conducting a survey amongstudents of journalism.

Sufficient and accurate search support is a crucial factor for successful information searching on web sites. This thesis evaluates the search support on the second version of the web site studera.nu with particular focus on how the web site meets up to criteria formulated on the basis of theories from research in information seeking and information searching. The evaluation is a preliminary investigation that may serve as a basis for a future more comprehensive evaluation. The four major questions for my thesis have been: 1. In which different ways can a user search? 2.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate if the library can be a real partner for researchers in managing and dealing with their research information. In this study, six researchers have been interviewed about their problems with information management. This study uses the method Critical Incident Technique for the interviews with the researchers. This method focuses mainly on problems and what happens around those problems.

Since Internet has become a more important and more certain source of information the user require greater and more demands than ever before on the layout and function of different web pages. When search engines gives us the opportunity to millions of hits in just a fraction of a second it?s essential to optimize the structure and architecture, which forms the foundations of all the content. In a time when a company?s digital footprint plays an important role for the costumer and the transmitter it?s of utmost importance to have a steady, well-structured foundation to build new platforms of information on.But how do you manage to build a good foundation? Some of the most important key elements in Information architecture are Organizing, Navigation, Search and Labeling.The aim of this study was to create guidelines for a user-friendlier interface, by analyzing the principals and gathered data.

My work has resulted in an interactive search engine for plants that can be found at www.plantit.se. In the work process I have searched for which search criteria is most important when doing searches on woodland plants. I have done this by an analysis of existing databases and with an survey where leading plant expertise answered questions about woodland plants. I analyzed three search pages that are on the internet today Havenet.dk, Backyardgardener.com and Den virtuella floran. I concluded that there are several flaws but also many positive aspects that I have used when developing the interface of my page. The survey resulted in the basis for my search criteria the answers listed the most important factors when planting woodland plants. From this information I developed a system with five values on every criteria.