Evaluation of information retrieval: precision and recall

The information retrieval system evaluation revolves around the notion of relevant and non-relevant documents. The performance indicator such as precision and recall are used to determine how far the system satisfies the user requirements. The effectiveness of information retrieval systems is essentially measured by comparing performance, functionality and systematic approach on a common set of queries and documents. The significance tests are used to evaluate functional, performance (precession and recall), collection and interface evaluation. We must focus on the user satisfaction, which is the key parameter of performance evaluation. It identifies the collection of relevant documents under the retrieved set of collection in specific time interval. The recall and precision technique are used to evaluate the efficacy of information retrieval systems. The response time and the relevancy of the results are the significant factors in user satisfaction. The comparison of search engine Yahoo and Google based on precision and recall technique.