Search engine patterns

1. ..a contextual computing approach may prove
a breakthrough in personalized search
efficiency..
November 2015

2.  Refers to the enhancement of a user’s interactions by understanding
the user, the context, and the applications and information being
used
 It’s about “actively adapting the computational environment - for each
and every user - at each point of computation”
 “Focuses on understanding the information consumption patterns of
each user, the various information foraging strategies and
applications they employ, and the nature of the information itself”
 A shift from “consensus relevancy” (relevancy for entire population
used for every person) to “personal relevancy” (relevancy is
determined for each individual)
 This shift to personal relevancy decreases the time it takes people to
find information

3.  Content-based approaches - using language to match a query with
results - this approach doesn’t help users determine which results are
actually worth reading
 Author-relevancy techniques - using citation and hyperlinks - sometimes
presents the problem of ‘authoring bias’ and/or ‘ranking bias’ (results
that are valued by authors are not necessarily those valued by the entire
population)
 Usage rank - this “leverages the actions of users to compute relevancy”
- the usage rank is computed from the frequency, recency, and/or
duration of interaction by users - usage ranks allow for changes in
relevancy over time to be determined
 All of the above techniques measure relevance “as a function of the
entire population of users”
 This does not acknowledge that “relevance is relative” for each user
 There needs to be a way to “take into account that different people find
different things relevant and that people’s interests and knowledge
change over time - “personal relevance”

4.  In order to personalize search, we need to combine at least
two different computational techniques - contextualization and
individualization
 Contextualization - “the interrelated conditions that occur
within an activity..includes factors like the nature of information
available, the information currently being examined, and the
applications in use”
 Individualization - “the totality of characteristics that
distinguishes an individual.. Uses the user’s goals, prior and
tacit knowledge, past information-seeking behaviors”

5.  Main ways to personalize a search are “query augmentation” and
“result processing”
 Query augmentation - when a user enters a query, the query can
be compared against the contextual information available to
determine if the query can be refined to include other terms
 Query augmentation can also be done by computing the
similarity between the query term and the user model - if the
query is on a topic the user has previously seen, the system can
reinforce the query with similar terms
 This more concise query is then shown to the user and
“submitted to a search engine for processing”
 Once the query has been augmented and processed by the
search engine, the results can be “individualized”
 The results being individualized - this means that the information
is filtered based upon information in the user’s model and/or
context
 The user model “can re-rank search results based upon the
similarity of the content of the pages in the results and the user’s
profile”

6.  Another processing method is to re-rank the
results based upon the “frequency, recency, or
duration of usage..providing users with the
ability to identify the most popular, faddish and
time-consuming pages they’ve seen”
 “Have Seen, Have Not Seen” - this features
allows new information to be identified and
return to information already seen”

7.  Designed to be a “generalized architecture for the
personalization of search across a variety of information
ecologies”
 The Outride client can be integrated into the sidebar of the
Internet - it “supports direct manipulation and has access to all
user interactions”
 Sidebar is split up into four separate information spaces -
Personal (personal hierarchy of each user’s links), Directory (a
catalog of links), History (user’s surf history), Web (search
results from the entire Web)
 The user models are computed from the content in these
information spaces in the sidebar

8.  Outride used eTesting Lbs to design a series of test to measure if the
Outride system actually succeeded in making searches faster and
easier to complete
 The elapsed time to successfully complete a search and the number
of interface actions (mouse clicks/number of entries entered) were
used as the measurements
 Participants performed 12 search tasks with Outride and a different
search engine
 Default user model was used for all participants
 Participants found the answers more quickly with Outride than with
any other search engine - on average, participants took 39 seconds
to complete the tasks using Outride and 75 seconds using Google
 Participants also needed fewer interface actions when using Outride
- 11 when using Outride and 21 using the other search engine

9.  Some of the scenarios contained tasks “directly
supported by the functionality provided by the
Outride system, creating an advantage against the
other search engines”
 Default profiles were used, instead of individualized
profiles - therefore, it did not “represent the test
participant’ actual surfing patterns, nor were the
participants intimately familiar with the content of the
profiles”
 Despite these issues, the “magnitude of the
difference between the Outride system and the
other engines is compelling”

10.  One problem is modeling a user’s changing
interests over time
 However, carefully designed interfaces can help
“alleviate inaccurate personalization and allow
users to control the extent of the personalization”
 Privacy issues are a problem since it is a system
that stores models based upon user’s interactions
with information

11. “When designing Web personalization
products, make sure you address all your
users”
By Udi Manber, Ash Patel, and John Robison

12.  This article discusses three different examples of
personalization on Yahoo! Including
 My Yahoo!
 Yahoo! Companion
 Inside Yahoo! Search

13.  My Yahoo! Is a customized personal copy of Yahoo!
 Users select from various models such as news,
stock prices, weather, and sports scores to put on
their Web page.
 Provides users with the latest information on every
subject, but with only the specific items they want to
know about.

14.  Personalization
 Users can do such things as chose certain TV channels to put in their TV
Guide
 Customized Content
 Example of this is a sports module that lists the teams in the user’s area after
obtaining that information from the user’s profile.
 Automatic Updates
 A My Yahoo! Option allows this page to automatically update at any user-
specified interval from 15 minutes to several hours
 Original Module Ability
 Modules can be selected from a long list, but can also be added by clicking on
a button at the original content page.
 Each module on a My Yahoo! Page also has an edit and remove button,
allowing users to manipulate their pages directly, without ever needing to visit
an edit/layout page.

15.  A browser’s embedded toolbar from which a user
can directly access most of Yahoo! features from
anywhere on the Web.
 Like a mini My Yahoo! that takes a small space at
the top of the page is always with you.

16.  The user interface is similar to any other
bookmark feature, but the difference is the
bookmarks are kept on the server (not simply
on the specific computer)
 Therefore changes that users make to their
toolbar will stay with users even if they switch
to a different computer
 Users have the ability to chose from several
toolbars (such as a regular one a stock
market one) and change them at any time

17.  Yahoo! like many other search engines tries to
personalize searches using information it is able
to obtain from the user
 It would be impossible for Yahoo! to customize
every search.

18.  If a user searches for the name of current movie,
Yahoo will show results for Yahoo! Movies, show an
image for the movie, the cast, and a pointer to a page
with current show times
 If the user had looked at showtimes on a page
previously and entered a zip code, Yahoo! can now
use that information to show the user movie times in
his or her own are

19.  Any company that collects private information must guard that
information with its life.
 Personal information about Yahoo! Is maintained in a specially
designed User Database (UDB) which was built on Yahoo!’s own
customized software.
 Yahoo! has data replication and distribution capabilities allowing
them to replicate and distribute the UDB over secure links to
remote locations in Asia and Europe
 Yahoo! has enlisted a security-audit company to evaluate our
procedures periodically and suggest necessary changes, as well
as employ several internal people devoted solely to privacy and
security issues.

20.  The issue of usability focuses mostly on the issue of predictability
 Personalization features that learn what user want and attempt to
satisfy them are hotly debated
 A weakness in these personalization features is unpredictability
 Example: A lot of people do not want customized news, they want
just the same news as everyone else
 Also getting news about cancer because a user some medical
journal on cancer in the past can confuse the user and even
jeopardize user trust and raise serious privacy concerns in the user’s
mind
 Any effective personalization feature should encourage
experimentation.

21.  Most users take what is given to them and never
customize.
 Even though companies like Yahoo! offer customized
pages for users, a great deal of effort must still go into
the default page.
 Companies should never underestimate power users
 Customization should follow you as much as possible
 People generally don’t understand the concept of
customization
 Make sure you address all your users
 Learn from users

22.  “Too many attempts have been made without sufficient
regard to what people really want, what they can use,
and how best it should fit their needs.”
 “A major challenge to large-scale personalization is to
lower the entry bar, making it easier for less-experienced
users to customize their pages, and making it clear to
novices that customization is possible.”