658062 - Search Behavior Study: How does the user's search behavior change?

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Mozilla Labs Graveyard :: Test Pilot Data Requests, defect)

Description

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

The main question we're looking to answer is how does the user's search behavior change with AwesomeBar HD installed. To measure this, the study detects when the user visits a search result page from a list of 42 pre-defined search engines.

These events show up with a event name like "search searchbar" with a value "search Google" meaning a search was done on Google from the search bar. There are 6 kinds of searches that are tracked:

search searchbar: search from the search bar
search urlbar: search from the location bar e.g., default search provider or keyword search
search awesomebar: search from the add-on
search home: search from about:home
search reload: user reloaded a search result
search link: search from web content (either linked or in-page search box)

I would assume just counting up the number of "search <type>" entries for each user can give an estimate of search behavior change -- mainly looking at awesomebar search quantity compared to searchbar + urlbar.

The study randomly configures users to be in 1 of 4 buckets, and this state is stored as part of the submission metadata "testpilot".
0: ui shows 14 category text links
1: ui shows 14 category icons
2: ui shows "search the web" link
3: ui shows google icon

Note: the "testpilot" metadata value may be missing if the user chose not to install the add-on, so there's actually 5 buckets of data to investigate. The study also tracks "addon" "disabled", "uninstalled" events if the user chooses to disable or get rid of the add-on, which may result in some "search awesomebar" events while still ending up with a missing "testpilot" metadata value.