Handbook of Research on Web Log Analysis

Citation

Bar‐Ilan, J. (2009), "Handbook of Research on Web Log Analysis", Online Information Review, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 620-621. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520910970040

The web is a major information source and communication channel. One of the major goals of web research is trying to understand what users are doing on the web. Web log analysis can help us to achieve this goal in conjunction with additional methods.

This handbook considers a wide range of topics relevant to web log analysis, including user behaviour, metrics for web and search log analysis, privacy and future research trends. The book consists of an introductory chapter and five sections, with a total of 25 chapters contributed by researchers and practitioners. The editors are well known in the log analysis research community and have published extensively on the topic. The introductory chapter discusses the theoretical and methodological foundations of log analysis: which types of data can be collected, and how they are defined and analysed.

Section 1 contains chapters on the history of log analysis, on the use of surveys as a complementary method and on privacy concerns when analysing web logs. Section 2 is devoted to methodology and metrics. The chapters discuss search and website log analysis methods, and the limitations and validity of web analysis. There are also recommendations for presenting web usage studies.

Section 3 contains five chapters on research in user behaviour analysis, including estimation of user behaviour from query logs, integration of interaction logs with the conceptual design of interaction, tips for tracking user behaviour, identification of user stereotypes and the use of social network analysis for studying communities.

Section 4 covers query log analysis, including the use of machine‐learning methods to classify queries, methods for topic identification of queries, query log analysis in biomedicine, query log analysis of Chinese search logs and the use of query logs for improving query refinement.

The last section, “Contextual and specialised analysis”, contains chapters on a conceptual framework for transition log analysis, a model for evaluation connector of websites (sites that serve as intermediaries for peer‐to‐peer web applications), study information extraction from blogs and an ethnographic approach to computer‐mediated communication. The final chapter of the book, by the editors, summarises the preceding chapters, examines the proposed methodologies and offers future research directions.

Each chapter ends with a list of key terms that serve as a succinct summary. The chapters are well designed the terminology and methods are clearly explained, and the book has a glossary and an extensive list of references. I highly recommend this item for any researcher and practitioner interested in the topic. The book will be a useful addition to information science and computer science libraries, both because there are practically no books on the topic and because the book presents the topic very well. Chapters can be used as course material for introductory and advanced courses on web log analysis.