What can internet search engines "suggest" about the usage and usability of popular desktop applications?

Abstract

In this paper, we show how Internet search query logs can yield rich, ecologically valid data sets describing the common tasks and issues that people encounter when using software on a day-to-day basis. These data sets can feed directly into standard usability practices. We address challenges in collecting, filtering, and summarizing queries, and show how data can be collected at very low cost, even without direct access to raw query logs.