An exploration of reasons for query reformulations

Query reformulation is the major method by which information seekers can communicate their information searching intentions to information retrieval systems. Despite a good deal of significant research on types of query reformulations, we still know little about why people reformulate their queries in various ways. We report on a study which elicited people's reasons for query reformulation and investigated the relationships between those reasons and types of query reformulations, and to the searchers' previous information search intentions. Based on these data, we propose a faceted classification of reasons for query reformulation; we find that the frequency of reasons for query reformulation is highly skewed to one type; we find that multiple reformulation types are used for multiple reasons; and, we both confirm and expand upon Xie's (2002) inventory of interactive search intentions. Implications of these results for further work and information retrieval system design are discussed.