By Erica Naone, Technology Review
Microsoft researchers are exploring ways to personalize search without skewing the results or alienating users. Search engines already use certain clues, such as a person’s geographical location or whether she is searching on a phone or PC, to offer more personalized results. Google goes a step further by mining a person’s past searches, if they have enabled a feature called Web History; and Bing is experimenting with using data collected via a user’s Facebook account to improve search results. But personalized search is far from perfect. For one thing, trying to predict too much can make search results overly narrow—only returning pages relevant to recipes, for example. And many users are hostile to the idea of search engines using their search history. The new research suggests ways for search engines to experiment with more personalization without skewing results or alienating users.
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/32281/?p1=A3&a=f
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