Findory's personalized web search

A couple weeks ago, Findory launched search history for web, news, and blog search. As I've said before, search history is not personalized search.

This week, Findory took our first step toward true personalized web search. In subtle and small ways, we are starting to modify web search results based on your history at Findory.com.

To see the impact, do a web search at Findory, then click on one or two of the search results, then do another search for something fairly similar. In cases where we believe we can help, we'll modify and highlight some of the search results.

Here's a couple specific examples:

• Search for "Yahoo".
  Click on the top link for Yahoo.com.
  Search for "Dilbert".
  The Dilbert page at Google a few results down will be highlighted and modestly reranked.
  
  
• Search for "Incredibles"
  Click on the IMDB link (fourth down).
  Search for "Nemo".
  The IMDB page on Finding Nemo will be highlighted and popped up to the top slot.

Please keep in mind these are our first, early, baby steps. The changes are small, infrequent, and subtle. Findory need to learn to walk before it can run. Over time, Findory will better understand how to help people find what they need and the changes will become larger and more frequent.

As small as this step may be, we believe it is a first for a commercial web search engine. Many are talking about personalized search, but no one is doing it. Our personalized web search learns from your behavior, modifies your search results, and helps you find what you need.

Update: It took many months, but a new version of Findory personalized web search has launched that makes more substantial changes in the relevance rank.