Nowadays in the information retrieval field, the changing world evokes the needs of exploring patterns and evolutions of certain objects, as well as predicting their future trends. This phenomenon brings increasing applications of temporal analysis, a means for exploring changes overtime. This study is a survey that examines and investigates the studies applying temporal analysis methods in the information retrieval field.

　　Three databases were selected for retrieving the information retrieval studies applying temporal analysis methods. Various materials were obtained, such as research papers, proceedings, theses, and so on. Trend analysis, natural language processing approach, and manually content analysis were used for data analysis.

　　The findings show that the use of temporal analysis keeps increasing rapidly from 2004. Both qualitative and quantitative analysis methods have been applied for temporal analysis. Information visualization technologies are also frequently employed in these studies. Temporal analysis strengthens the information retrieval studies in traditional and emerging information-retrieval-related areas and relevant cross field research areas.

　　These findings help researchers gain insights into temporal analysis and its applications in information retrieval, which will assist them to use these methods and create new temporal analysis methods for various research topics in their future studies.