Mobile Web search personalization using ontological user profile
Abstract
Most present day search engines have a deterministic behavior in the sense that they return the same search results for all users who submit the same query at a certain
time. They do not take the userʼs interests and preferences into account in the retrieval
process. Integrating user context in the retrieval process can help deliver more targeted
search results, thereby providing a personalized search experience to the user. Personalizing web search involves the process of identifying user interests during
interaction with the user, and then using that information to deliver results that are more
relevant to the user. In this thesis, we present our approach to personalizing web search
on a mobile device (iPhone). Our approach involves building an ontological model of
user interests on the userʼs mobile device based on his interaction with web search
results. Personalization of search results is achieved by re-ranking search results
returned by a standard search engine (Yahoo) based on proximity to the userʼs interest
model. The ability to recognize user interests in a completely non-invasive way and the
accuracy of personalized results are some of the major advantages of our approach.