This document serves as our northstar for search efficiency and hit rate improvement. As of this writing, development efforts are instead centered on nearer-term goals from User Behavior Search Metrics & Data Collection (2025) , balancing long-term goal with practical feasibility. |
The companion document, “Rethinking Search Success Metrics,” reflects on the pros and cons of the metrics listed herein. |
This document outlines a practical approach for tracking and improving search efficiency and hit rate within a biomedical search interface. It defines key performance metrics, details methods for collecting relevant data, and offers a suggested action plan for optimizing query understanding, ranking algorithms, and user experience. The goal is to enable measurable progress toward a targeted improvement in search performance.
To measure progress toward an x% improvement in search efficiency and hit rate, the following metrics should be tracked:
Time to First Relevant Result (TFRR)
Definition: The average time it takes for a user to find a relevant result in the search interface.
Goal: Reduce TFRR by at least x%.
Data Collection: Log user interactions, scroll depth, and dwell time per result.
Search Abandonment Rate
Definition: Percentage of searches where users do not click on any results.
Goal: Reduce abandonment by improving search relevance.
Data Collection: Track query-to-click conversion via logging.
Click Position of First Relevant Result
Definition: The position of the first relevant result that a user clicks.
Goal: Improve ranking so that relevant results appear in the top 3 positions.
Data Collection: Analyze click logs and heatmaps.
Query Success Rate (QSR)
Definition: Percentage of queries that return at least one relevant result based on user engagement (clicks, dwell time).
Goal: Increase QSR by x% over the benchmark.
Data Collection: Analyze log data and explicit user feedback.
Precision at K (P@K) & Recall
Definition: Measures how many of the top K results are relevant (precision) and how many relevant results are retrieved in total (recall).
Goal: Improve precision@5 and recall by x%.
Data Collection: Evaluate using a manually labeled dataset of query-result pairs.
Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR)
Definition: Measures the ranking quality of the first relevant search result.
Goal: Improve MRR by optimizing ranking algorithms.
Data Collection: Log user clicks and compare against relevance labels.
To ensure accurate tracking, data should be collected systematically. The following methods can be utilized:
Implement query logging: Capture search terms, session duration, result clicks, and refinements.
Track user interactions: Record scroll depth, mouse movements, and time spent on results.
Use A/B testing: Compare search ranking models to measure impact on hit rate and efficiency.
Explicit relevance feedback: Allow users to rate search results (thumbs up/down, Likert scale).
Crowdsourced labeling: Use biomedical domain experts to label relevance for gold-standard datasets.
Re-rank using ML-based relevance scoring: Use NLP models to score biomedical relevance.
Use embeddings for semantic search: Improve hit rate by matching concepts beyond keyword matching.
Establish a baseline for search efficiency and hit rate.
Use existing logs to determine the current QSR, P@K, and MRR.
Implement query expansion (e.g., synonym matching for biomedical terms).
Use intent classification to guide ranking models.
Fine-tune weights of search ranking features.
Introduce relevance tuning with user feedback loops.
Reduce time-to-first-result with prefetching strategies.
Implement auto-suggestions to guide users effectively.
Perform quarterly reviews of search analytics.
Introduce controlled experiments (A/B tests) to validate ranking changes.
Define search efficiency and hit rate metrics (TFRR, QSR, P@K, MRR).
Collect data using query logs, feedback mechanisms, and automated relevance labeling.
Optimize query understanding, ranking models, and UX design to improve efficiency.
Continuously measure and iterate through controlled experiments.