Effect of snippet text bolding in search user behavior

Search users rely on result captions including titles, snippets and URLs to decide whether they should click a particular result.Snippets usually serve as a query-dependent summary of its corresponding landing page and are, therefore, one of the most important factors in the search interaction process.At present, commercial search engines use query bolding strategies, but these have various problems and lack useful information.This paper presents a bolding strategy that improves user search efficiency.The method includes three bolding strategies based on crowd sourcing results which differ from the query terms strategy.Tests show that the search behavior is affected by the term bolding strategies without changes in the snippet contents.The tests also show that the responses to the three bolding strategies are better than responses to the query terms bolding strategy to produce a better bolding strategy.The appropriate bolding numbers, bolding ratio, and targeted information have a very positive impact on the user's search behavior.