Distinguishing humans from robots in web search logs

Abstract

The workload on web search engines is actually multiclass, being derived from the activities of both human users and automated robots. It is important to distinguish between these two classes in order to reliably characterize human web search behavior, and to study the effect of robot activity. We suggest an approach based on a multi-dimensional characterization of search sessions, and take first steps towards implementing it by studying the interaction between the query submittal rate and the minimal interval of time between different queries.