  Key to any research involving session search is the understanding of how a
user's queries evolve throughout the session. When a user creates a query
reformulation, he or she is consciously retaining terms from their original
query, removing others and adding new terms. By measuring the similarity
between queries we can make inferences on the user's information need and how
successful their new query is likely to be. By identifying the origins of added
terms we can infer the user's motivations and gain an understanding of their
interactions.
  In this paper we present a novel term-based methodology for understanding and
interpreting query reformulation actions. We use TREC Session Track data to
demonstrate how our technique is able to learn from query logs and we make use
of click data to test user interaction behavior when reformulating queries. We
identify and evaluate a range of term-based query reformulation strategies and
show that our methods provide valuable insight into understanding query
reformulation in session search.
