Search Engines Personalization Taly Sharon and Ariel Frank

Search Engines Personalization Taly Sharon and Ariel Frank T. Sharon & A. Frank

Google and Yahoo !Control the Market n Share of Searches December 2004 T. Sharon & A. Frank 2

Problem: Search is not Sticky! n n Google is offering Gmail. Yahoo has acquired Stata Labs (startup) n n Ø Bloomba e-mail. SAproxy spam-blocking technology. A new (old) front: Personalization T. Sharon & A. Frank 3

What in the Presentation? n n What is personalization? Areas for personalization Who personalizes? Personalization challenges T. Sharon & A. Frank 4

? What is Personalization n Word. Net Dictionary Adj. 1. personalised – made for or directed or adjusted to a particular individual; "personalized luggage"; "personalized advice" Synonyms: individualised, individualized, personalized Related Words individualised, individualized, personalized T. Sharon & A. Frank 5

Web Pages Personalization n On a Web site, personalization is the process of tailoring pages to individual users' characteristics or preferences. http: //searchsap. techtarget. com/g. Definition/0, 294236, sid 21_gci 532341, 00. html n Involves customizing some feature of a product or service so that the customer enjoys more convenience, lower cost, or some other benefit. www. personalization. org T. Sharon & A. Frank 6

A More Practical Definition n Personalization is a combination of customization which includes: n n explicit preferences and an implied storage for every user, and contextualization, where an application knows about a task and offers a taskspecific meaning or infers from user behavior what the user is trying to do. http: //www. webpronews. com/news/ebusinessnews /wpn-45 -20040803 Yahoo. Talks. Personalized. Search. html T. Sharon & A. Frank 7

Types of Personalization 0. Preferences (set results number to max: -) My/Personalized homepage Local/Geographic search User Interface/Visualization Personalize/Settings Downloading/Localization 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. • • 6. Explorer Buttons Toolbars Desktop/Personal Alerts Memory/History – “save search” or “save results” T. Sharon & A. Frank 8

My. 1 ? My. Yahoo: What Will Yours Do T. Sharon & A. Frank 9

My. MSN T. Sharon & A. Frank 10

Google Personalized Homepage T. Sharon & A. Frank 11

So what was the message ? T. Sharon & A. Frank 12

Local/Geographic Search. 2 n n n Google Local/Maps (also ca, uk, mobile) Yahoo Maps did it a long time ago… A 9 does it differently T. Sharon & A. Frank 13

Google Local T. Sharon & A. Frank 14

Google Local Search Result T. Sharon & A. Frank 15

Google – Satellite T. Sharon & A. Frank 16

User Interface/Visualization. 3 n n n A few examples MSN Search Builder Clusters/Grouping/Maps n n n Vivisimo/Clusty Mooter/Cart. OO/Web. Brain A 9 Display T. Sharon & A. Frank 17

MSN Search Builder T. Sharon & A. Frank 18

Clusty T. Sharon & A. Frank 20

Kart. OO T. Sharon & A. Frank 21

A 9 T. Sharon & A. Frank 22

Personalized Search. 4 n Google Personalized T. Sharon & A. Frank 23

Google Personalized setup T. Sharon & A. Frank 24

Google Personalized Search T. Sharon & A. Frank 25

Google Personalized Search T. Sharon & A. Frank 26

Theory vs. Practice? ! T. Sharon & A. Frank 27

…Yahoo Personals? Oops T. Sharon & A. Frank 28

Downloading/Localization. 5 n n Explorer Buttons Toolbars Desktop/Personal Alerts Want Toolbars? T. Sharon & A. Frank 29

Desktop Search n n n Searches PC desktop Integrate results in SE searches Timeline – warm battle during the fall…. : n n n October 2004: Google Desktop released December 2004: MSN toolbar suite December 2004: Ask Jeeves desktop search January 2005: Yahoo desktop search May 2005: MSN Toolbar+Desktop T. Sharon & A. Frank 30

Memory/History/Save Search. 6 n n n A 9 My. Ask. Jeeves My. Search. Yahoo T. Sharon & A. Frank 31

(A 9 (top T. Sharon & A. Frank 32

(A 9 (bottom T. Sharon & A. Frank 33

My. Jeeves http: //sp. ask. com/docs/mj/tour 4. html T. Sharon & A. Frank 34

My. Search. Yahoo T. Sharon & A. Frank 35

Google Search History T. Sharon & A. Frank 36

? What’s Next T. Sharon & A. Frank 37

Human Search Engine? T. Sharon & A. Frank 38

Google Answers T. Sharon & A. Frank 39

!Ask. Yahoo T. Sharon & A. Frank 40

Also in Israel - Ask. Zeev T. Sharon & A. Frank 41

Wondir, Answers. com ((and Ask/Brainboost n An attempt to give an answer to a question and not documents for a query. T. Sharon & A. Frank 42

Answers. com T. Sharon & A. Frank 43

(? Who Personalizes (all n n n Amazon/A 9 – history, presentation, local Google – local/map, Desktop, Personalized-Homepage, Google. Alert, History. Yahoo – local/map, my. Yahoo, my. Search Ask. Jeeves – Saved Searches MSN – Toolbar+Desktop, presentation, question answering * All have Toolbars T. Sharon & A. Frank 44

Challenges n Search is temporal. n n n Just because people search for something doesn't mean they are truly interested in it. For example, if you're sick and search for information on a particular medicine, that doesn't mean you are always going to be interested in finding information on that medicine. Multiple users share a computer? A user performs a search for a friend? requires user effort to be successful. Privacy Issues. T. Sharon & A. Frank 45

? Questions www. sharon-it. com T. Sharon & A. Frank 46