Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an algorithm to harvest user specified information on finance portals and compile it into machine-readable datasets for quantitative analysis. Design/methodology/approach – The Visual Basic macro language in Microsoft Excel is applied to...

The Web is a communication and information technology that is often used for the distribution and retrieval of personal information. Many people and organizations mount Web sites containing large amounts of information on individuals, particularly about celebrities. However, limited studies have...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report an empirical investigation into conceptions of the “invisible web”. Design/methodology/approach – This was an exploratory qualitative study based on in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with 15 members of academic staff from three...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to specify user‐defined relevance criteria by which people select hyperlinks and pages in web searching. Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative and qualitative analysis was undertaken of talking aloud data from nine web searches conducted about...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine our current knowledge of how searchers perceive and react to the possibility of missing potentially important information whilst searching the web is limited. The study reported here seeks to investigate such perceptions and reactions, and to explore the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which end user searching on the web has become the primary method of locating digital images for many people. This paper seeks to investigate how users structure these image queries. Design/methodology/approach – This study...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe: a new taxonomy of metacognitive skills designed to support the study of metacognition in the context of web searching; a data collection instrument based on the taxonomy; and the results of testing the instrument on a sample of university...

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the history of online searching through the views of one of its pioneers. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents, and comments on, the recollections of Jim Hall, one of the earliest UK‐based operators of, and writers on, online retrieval...

This study chooses the content perception perspective to develop a theoretical model portraying the psychological activities of Web surfers exposed to content Web sites. After collecting 549 empirical observations in a controlled lab environment, tests the theoretical relationships by using the...