Personalizing Web Search: Communities and Collaboration

摘要

Conservative recent estimates of the Web's current size refer to its 10 billion documents and a growth rate that tops 60 terabytes of new information per day (Roush 2004). In 2000 the entire World-Wide Web consisted of just 21 terabytes of information, now it grows by 3 times this every single day (Lyman & Varian 2003). This growth frames the information overload problem that is threatening to stall the information revolution going forward. In short, users are finding it increasingly difficult to locate the right information at the right time in the right way. Search engine technologies are struggling to cope with the sheer quantity of information that is available, a problem that is greatly exacerbated by the apparent inability of Web users to formulate effective search queries that accurately reflect their current information needs.