To support researchers and designers in synthesizing and understanding the advances in search, this monograph offers a structured means to think about web search result visualization, based on an inclusive model of search that integrates information retrieval, information seeking and a higher level context of tasks and goals.

It examines each of these levels of search in a survey of advances in browsers and related tools by defining search-related cognitive processes and analyzing innovative design approaches. It then discusses evaluations at each of these levels of search, presenting significant results and identifying both the traditional and novel means used to produce them.

Based on this examination, the authors propose a taxonomy of search result visualization techniques that can be used to identify gaps for future research and as a reference for designers of next generation web search systems.