Retrievability is a term associated with the ease with which information can be found or retrieved using an information system, specifically a
search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
or
information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...
system.
A document (or information object) has high retrievability if there are many queries which retrieve the document via the search engine, and the document is ranked sufficiently high that a user would encounter the document. Conversely, if there are few queries that retrieve the document, or when the document is retrieved the documents are not high enough in the ranked list, then the document has low retrievability.
Retrievability can be considered as one aspect of
findability.
Applications of retrievability include detecting
search engine bias
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
, measuring algorithmic bias, evaluating the influence of search technology, tuning information retrieval systems and evaluating the quality of documents in a
collection
Collection or Collections may refer to:
* Cash collection, the function of an accounts receivable department
* Collection (church), money donated by the congregation during a church service
* Collection agency, agency to collect cash
* Collectio ...
.
See also
*
Information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...
*
Knowledge mining
*
Search engine optimization
*
Findability
References
*
*{{cite book, author1=Azzopardi, L. , author2=Vinay, V. , name-list-style=amp , chapter=Accessibility in information retrieval, title=Proceedings of the IR research, 30th European conference on Advances in information retrieval, year=2008, pages=482–489, publisher=Springer, location=Glasgow, UK, series=ECIR '08, isbn=9783540786450 , chapter-url=http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1793333, accessdate=7 Dec 2016
Web design
Knowledge representation
Information science