Personalized Search

Recently, many search engines has started rolling out Web search that is claimed to be 'personalized.' First from A9.com, it is backed by online merchant Amazon.com. The search offer heavy browser end scripts to achieve fast and smooth interaction with users. The search on the personal front is that it saves your search history, search result of your picks, and you can save your notes with the listings if you will. Shortly after A9's birth, ask.com rolled out its personalized search function that it save and share the listings you like with others. Shortly after, Yahoo released its mysearch.yahoo.com pretty much loaded with the same set of features - save and share your search results with others - via fairly easy user interface. Among them, A9.com took the step further to offer a 'discover' feature that it recommends links are based on your search and browsing history and are updated at least once a day.

However, the only search engine that lives up to the definition of 'personalization' so far is Google. Google is also the earliest search engine that explored personalized search and realsed its beta Google Personalized site long before other competitors. Google Personalized takes in user's preference, and arrange search results' positions based on such profile, making it real personalization to some extend without introducing any complexity to the users.