Efficient internet search engine service provisioning exploiting a collaborative web result ranking mechanism

Abstract

In the context of this paper, a meta-search third-party Web result ranking mechanism is proposed, which is capable of adapting over the continuous changes that occur on the Web, providing in parallel personalized information acquisition considering the user's navigation behaviour. The designed meta search engine service rates, re-organises and combines the results acquired from search services for a specific user information resource request in accordance with a weighted combination of a performance related factor (tightly related to the ranking of the Web result as given by the search engine service) and a reliability related factor (corresponding to the user's satisfaction stemming from the specific Web result that he/she browses), while the performance of each search engine with respect to adequately adapting to the Web evolution is taken into account. Assuming a group of users falling within the same category with respect to the information/resource needs, the Web result reliability rating system is collaborative in the sense that it considers both first-hand information (acquired from the user's past experiences with the search engine services) and second-hand information (corresponding to other users' experiences with search engine services), while the matching degrees of the users' profiles have been taken into account. A set of results indicative of the efficiency of our proposed scheme is provided. Transparency is achieved for both personalization and Web evolution adaptation mechanisms, requiring virtually none effort from the user's part.