The web has become a major information source both in everyday and in professional life, and it is growing continuously. New pages are being published on the Internet every day. Due to the information is vast and almost relevant to all topics, people are impossible to view over every webpage. Thus, search engines, as information retrieval tools, are relied by web users.

Heting Chu (2003, P81) notes that Information retrieval can be accomplishes by taking the searching approach, the browsing approach, or the two approaches combined. What approach would be taken depends on what kind of information need the user has.

Searching, is intend to find out what would match with the terms specified in the query, using different retrieval techniques, and searching can be an effective retrieval method when the query is specific and the user knows explicitly what to look for (Heting Chu, 2003, P82). Users favor the building block approach that uses single concept searches, and the snowballing approach that modifies the search query based on the result retrieved. In addition, lots of users just quick/convenient approach, by just type a single keyword or several term at once by leaving a space. Users can repeat this process until they find satisfied result.

Browsing is action of seeking and selecting information by skimming, scanning, and other similar activities. People like to browse for getting information when a topic is not clearly defined, or finding information that is hard to specify explicitly, or choosing the right information among a mixture of relevant and irrelevant items (Heting Chu, 2003, P88).

Kowalski (1997) lists how people browse over search results they obtained.

(1). Browse by ranking. Users choice the search results that are presented in ranked order based on certain ranking algorithm.

(2). Browse by zone. The zone here refers to traditionally refined fields such as title as abstract.

(3). Browse by highlighted area. Those areas might contain information that people are looking for.

In Internet retrieval system, there are other two browsing types. One is to browse by category, and the other is to browse by hyperlinks (Heting Chu, 2003, P89).

These two distinctive retrieval methods: searching and browsing, have different purposes and functions. According to Cox (1992), Searching approach users know what they want and wished to find where the database it is available. For instance, Internet users search on search engines and find out a search result list that locate web pages that include the content that the user looking for. However, Browsing approach users know where (what database) they are, and want to find what information is available there. For instance, Internet users select suitable web pages from search results, then browse them through hyperlinks and find the contents they need form those web pages.

Comparing these two approaches, searching need user know what they want before they search, while browsing need less knowledge preparation or just need broadly know what they want. Searching has more efficiency than browsing, because browsing needs more cognition to filter irrelevant information and recognize those they actually need.

Base on two types of approaches in information retrieval: searching and browsing. As retrieval tool, search engines are designed by taking those theories. Essentially, search engines have two different retrieving types: directory-based and query-based searching (Shu-Sheng Liaw, 2004). Most of search engine provide both keyword searching because it their primary job. A few search engines such as Yahoo! or Google also provides web directories for users to look for information. Those directories catalog websites by content types or industries.

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Reference:

Heting Chu,(2003).Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age, Medford: Information Today Inc.

Shu-Sheng Liaw and Hsiu-Mei Huang, (2004). Information retrieval from the World Wide Web: a user-focused approach based on individual experience with search engines, Computers in Human Behavior, In Press, Corrected Proof.

K. Cox (1992). Information retrieval by browsing.

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