tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post115576918046792588..comments2024-03-29T05:14:10.903-07:00Comments on Geeking with Greg: New personalized web search at FindoryGreg Lindenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09216403000599463072noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1155847386463060442006-08-17T13:43:00.000-07:002006-08-17T13:43:00.000-07:00Thanks, MB! Glad you like it!Good point on the ex...Thanks, MB! Glad you like it!<BR/><BR/>Good point on the explanations. Telling people "why" a recommendation was made can often increase the perception of the quality and relevance of the recommendations.<BR/><BR/>I started to implement the "why" feature for Findory personalized web search but I ran into two issues that made me stop.<BR/><BR/>First, the explanations looked like they would not be compelling or easily understood by searchers. They seemed far too technical, of interest only to geeks. Higher level, simpler explanations differed little from what is up there now, a general message about how the recommendations are generated.<BR/><BR/>Second, the detailed explanation gives away quite a bit about how the personalization is being done at a level that makes be a bit uncomfortable, especially when the detailed explanations seemed like they would be confusing to the average user.<BR/><BR/>So, in the end, I opted for a simple, general explanation of how the recommendations are generated. <BR/><BR/>I may revisit this if I get a clever idea on how to clarify and improve the messaging so non-geeks could appreciate the explanations.<BR/><BR/>As for what Findory recommends, it picks items you have visited before and items that other searchers with similar search and clickthrough behavior have visited. It is not merely picking items from the same domain.<BR/><BR/>By the way, on the simple technique of picking items you have visited before, there was an interesting poster (<A HREF="http://people.csail.mit.edu/teevan/work/publications/posters/sigir06.pdf " REL="nofollow">PDF</A>) on the value of doing that at SIGIR 2006. The authors included Jaime Teevan, who has done some interesting work on personalized search.<BR/><BR/>On your last point, I agree the web is sparse and many techniques for personalized web search benefit from a lot of data. For Findory's efforts, yes, more data would help enormously.Greg Lindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09216403000599463072noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1155838209471837352006-08-17T11:10:00.000-07:002006-08-17T11:10:00.000-07:00Pretty cool concept, Greg.One of the things I love...Pretty cool concept, Greg.<BR/><BR/>One of the things I love about Findory News is the visibility into *why* an article was recommended. Do you plan something similar for web search?<BR/><BR/>I tried about 25 web searches on a single subjet and it seems that Findory recommends sites that I've already visited. It also seems that Findory recommends pages that I haven't visited, if I've visited other pages for that site.<BR/><BR/>I'm guessing that unlike news, which is a fairly small and predictable domain, web searches will be far more sparse -- it's far more likely that I'm searching for something that few others are. As a "tiny little startup", how will you get the critical mass to make personalized web search work as well as news search?mbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01888886220370104819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1155811543525007512006-08-17T03:45:00.000-07:002006-08-17T03:45:00.000-07:00Greg, we get it ... Findory is a TINY LITTLE START...Greg, we get it ... Findory is a TINY LITTLE STARTUP :-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6569681.post-1155777202316795092006-08-16T18:13:00.000-07:002006-08-16T18:13:00.000-07:00Oops! Silly typo! I fixed it. Thanks, Enkrates!...Oops! Silly typo! I fixed it. Thanks, Enkrates!Greg Lindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09216403000599463072noreply@blogger.com