Query Reformulations (QR) and Search Engines Optimimization (SEO)	Visited: 740 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Jose Nunez February 01, 2007

In early studies, Query Reformulations (QR) were defined mostly by Repeating Terms of previous search queries. So basically, searchers were substituting, adding and deleting specific terms from previous queries. And at a lower frequency, they were making changes to punctuation and spelling, or splitting compound terms, changing case and using derivative forms of abbreviations and words.

In more recent studies, searchers were typing in shorter queries, mostly looking at top ten results, seldomly modifying the query at all. Another set of QR research was done, again confirming that within the first few seconds, searchers still reformulate their queries more frequently rather than submitting a new query. But this time, additional information was discovered in that this tendency to reformulate queries, increases with time.

According to this research, a search engine could apply a service with the purpose of calculating the probabilities of future search actions based on the length of the delay noted since the last query. If the searcher has not performed a query within two minutes, for example, this search service might conclude that the user is likely to desire a reformulation of this given query. The service then could suggest an alternate query using synonyms of the original one, (more likely) or even to initiate a larger service to reformulate a new query.

What is really important to note, is that when searches modify their queries, they do it in small increments, and the most common modification is to change single terms. So just like in the early days of searcher behaviour based studies, most aspects of it remain unchanged. Most searchers use search services under the repeatition of terms from previous queries. That is why keyword-brand associations are very important for SEO. Another important component to consider is the description optimization, since besides the title, searchers respond to this piece of information on the search results. That is all that most searchers normally need to determine wether a search result is relevant or not, and ironically, that is all they got besides the actual url to click.