Many search systems provide users with recommended queries during online information seeking. Although usage statistics are often used to recommend queries, this information is usually not displayed to the user. In this study, we investigate how the presentation of this information impacts use of query suggestions. Twenty-three subjects used an experimental search system to find documents about four topics. Eight query suggestions were provided for each topic: four were high quality queries and four were low quality queries. Fake usage information indicating how many other people used the queries was also provided. For half the queries this information was high and for the other half this information was low. Results showed that subjects could distinguish between high and low quality queries and were not influenced by the usage information. Qualitative data revealed that subjects felt favorable about the suggestions, but the usage information was less important for the search task used in this study.

This paper investigates subjects' stopping behaviors and estimates of recall in an interactive information retrieval (IIR) experiment. Subjects completed four recall-oriented search tasks and were asked to estimate how many of the relevant documents they believed they had found after each task. Subjects also responded to an interview question probing their reasons for stopping a search. Results show that most subjects believed they found about 51-60% of the relevant documents and that this estimate was correlated positively with number of documents saved and actual recall, even though subjects' recall estimates were inaccurate. Reasons given for stopping search are also explored.