Can search systems detect users' task difficulty?: some behavioral signals

Jingjing Liu, Chang Liu, Jacek Gwizdka, Nicholas J. Belkin

Abstract: In this paper, we report findings on how user behaviors vary in tasks with different difficulty levels as well as of different types. Two behavioral signals: document dwell time and number of content pages viewed per query, were found to be able to help the system detect when users are working with difficult tasks.