Understanding Documentation Use Through Log Analysis
Topics: Navboost, Ranking, User Signals
This paper by Google presents an exploratory study analyzing how developers use software documentation through log analysis of over 100,000 users across four Google cloud services. The research combines automated clustering analysis with qualitative methods to identify patterns in documentation usage and correlates these patterns with user characteristics and subsequent API adoption. The study demonstrates that analyzing page-view logs at scale can provide valuable insights for documentation design and potentially enable personalized documentation experiences.