Personalized Search

Google Personalized Search was launched on June 28, 2005, which was reported in Search Engine Watch Blog. Before that, there was another Google Personalized Search, which asks each user to create a profile explicitly (e.g., which category information (e.g., kids and sports) you prefer to), and then personalizes the search results according to categories you select. The new Google Personalized Search instead uses user interaction history as implicit feedback information to infer the user interest and personalize the search results. They store the user query history and clickthrough data on Google servers. When the user submits a query, the query history and clickthrough data are used to personalize the search results. No details about how they utilize the user interaction history in personalization are provided. It is supposed that the more user interaction history data are collected, the more personalized relevant search results are returned.

Charlene Li has a blog to discuss the launch of Google Personalized Search. Several issues such as privacy and possible improvements mentioned in the blog are actually addressed in UCAIR project (see the next paragraph).  Geeking with Greg has several thoughts about Google Personalized Search too. One issue pointed out in the blog is that Google personalized search does not provide the user the information about which results are pushed up by Personalized Search (UCAIR project does tell the user which results are pushed up by personalization) and why some results are pushed up by personalization.

Compared with Google Personalized Search, UCAIR project personalizes the search result on the client side. The user interaction history is totally stored on the client side so that the privacy is not an issue as it is for Google Personalized Search. Moreover, putting personalized search on the client side, we can utilize more user information on the client side to do further personalization. For example, we can make use of the local files on the user’s hard disk and bookmarks of web browser as long-term user interest to personalize the search results. It is expected that some search engine toolbars will introduce such functionality in the future.