Personalization of the Web Search

Abstract

Web search engines help users find useful information on the WWW. However, when the same query is submitted by different users, typical search engines return the same result regardless of who submitted the query. Generally, each user has different information needs for his/her query. Therefore, the search results should be adapted to users with different information needs. So, there is need of several approaches to adapting search results according to each user's need for relevant information without any user effort. Such search systems that adapt to each user's preferences can be achieved by constructing user profiles based on modified collaborative filtering with detailed analysis of user's browsing history. There are three possible types of web search system which can provide personalized information: (1) systems using relevance feedback, (2) systems in which users register their interest, and (3) systems that recommend information based on user's history. In first technique, users have to provide feedback on relevant or irrelevant judgments which is time consuming and the second one needs registration of users with their static interests which need extra effort from user. So, the third technique is best in which users don't have to give explicit rating; relevancy automatically tracked by user behavior with search results and history of data usage. It doesn't require registration of interests; it captures changing interests of user dynamically by itself. The result section shows that user's browsing history allows each user to perform more fine-grained search by capturing changes of each user's preferences without any user effort. Users need less time to find the relevant snippet in personalized search results compared to original results.