[Search-l] tracking which urls are clicked in the results?

[Peter Burden]

On 15/02/2008, jer <jeremie at jabber.org> wrote:
>
> Obviously the data is valuable, associating the search term with
> which result/url was selected, and I've been asked numerous times why
> we're not doing it.  The practical reason why not is simply we
> haven't put any thought into exactly how to incorporate the feedback
> into ranking.  The ideological reason why not is that transparency is
> an important foundation here, and it would be collecting/using data
> in a very non-transparent way.  The privacy reason is that we're
> storing something that may not be explicitly understood by the user
> (although lots of other sites do this already, I don't think that
> just because everyone else is, is a good excuse though).
>
> My question is, is any of this worth overcoming?  Maybe an opt-in,
> only if logged in, and it would be public in your profile, would
> anyone even want to do this?



I assume you're referring to user feedback via the star rating. I also
assume
that users can use Search Wikia results as a simple list of links and if
they
click on a link this DOES NOT involve Search Wikia in any way, their browser
takes them straight to the selected site. This is, I believe, the way Google
and
other SEs operate.

For any query you would have a list of value:URL pairs with values in the
range 1-5
if the user chose to provide feedback. This recognises that a URL is only
"good" in
the context of a particular query and not in any general way.
[I can see a possible combinatorial problem here.]

Of course several different users may make the same query and provide
similar
feedback thereby building up a recommendation score. Perhaps the
recommendation
score should be normalised by the highest score for the current query.
[There needs to be some mechanism to detect the same (financially motivated
!)
user repeatedly recommending the same URL for the same query. I can't, at
the
moment, see  how to address this problem without infringing privacy etc.,]

Assuming the above indicated problems can be overcome and I'm sure somebody
on the list will have a good idea that I haven't thought of, then I think
you might
use the information as one more of the various weighting factors that drive
result
ranking. With what weighting I've no idea.

Practically I don't think this is too difficult and would be a very useful
feature.

I don't really see that there is a transparency problem. In explaining to
users how
to rate results, the explanation can make it clear how this information will
"make
Search Wikia better". Showing how it is used is the same problem as showing
all
the details of the ranking mechanism which is a central part of the "Search
WIkia"
openness as I understand it.

I don't really see the privacy issue either, if people don't want their
preferences
stored or used they don't have to rate results. This is OK, good privacy is
the
default.

I certainly like the idea that users can login if they wish. Search Wikia
could
remember personal preferences and other useful information.

The very closely related topic would be storing your searches (and
> urls) as a personal history feature.  I'm more of the mindset that we
> need to build tools and features for our community first, before we
> start working much on end-user personal features.


For logged in users perhaps, but I think there are more important issues
to sort out.

Jer
>
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