On Search Engine Evaluation Metrics

2-3-Oh my God, a mistake!-It's not our mistake!-Isn't it? Whose is it?-Information Retrieval. " BRAZIL "-4-Acknowledgements One man deserves the credit, one man deserves the blame… TOM LEHRER, " LOBACHEVSKY " I would like to thank my supervisor, Wolfgang Stock, who provided me with patience, support and the occasional much-needed prod to my derrière. He gave me the possibility to write a part of this thesis as part of my research at the Department of Information Science at Düsseldorf University; and it was also him who arranged for undergraduate students to act as raters for the study described in this thesis. I would like to thank my co-supervisor, Wiebke Petersen, who bravely delved into a topic not directly connected to her research, and took the thesis on sightseeing tours in India and to winter beaches in Spain. Wiebke did not spare me any mathematical rod, and many a faulty formula has been spotted thanks to her. I would like to thank Dirk Lewandowski, in whose undergraduate seminar I first encountered the topic of web search evaluation, and who provided me with encouragement and education on the topic. I am also indebted to him for valuable comments on a draft of this thesis. I would like to thank the aforementioned undergraduates from the Department of Information Science for their time and effort on providing the data on which this thesis' practical part stands. Last, but definitely not least, I thank my wife Alexandra, to whom I am indebted for far more than I can express. She even tried to read my thesis, which just serves to show. As is the custom, I happily refer to the acknowledged all good that I have derived from their help, while offering to blame myself for any errors they might have induced.