They begin by observing that “the traditional search interface has remained relatively static” before going on to describe “a recommender system approach to Web search which allows users to dynamically interact with the result-space that is of interest to them,” which they see as “an overlay interface as a complement to an existing search engine.”  This will sound familiar to anyone who has used Surf Canyon, which the researchers acknowledge (emphasis added):

“… Surf Canyon is an excellent example of a next-generation approach, and allows users to interact with results returned by existing engines; in short, users can select a result and receive recommendations drawn  from related results that appear further down a result list. Surf Canyon launched in the latter stages of our own research and presents an interface similar to what is proposed here.”

While there are significant differences in terms or implementation, their results are similar to what Surf Canyon has demonstrated:

“A key question is whether the resulting recommendations were found to be relevant. In fact… at least one of the 3 recommended results was selected approximately 25% of the time, a very significant indicator of relevance…”

Step 1: Enter you query at search.SurfCanyon.com or, if you like, download our add-on and then go to your favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo! or Bing), just like you always do, and enter your keywords.

Our example will use a search for the term “dolphins” since it is often used to illustrate one of the classic problems with information retrieval. No matter how much information is gathered about the subject, the individual, or all the individuals who have ever searched for “dolphins”, it is impossible to know a priori whether or not the searcher’s intent is related to the animal or to the football team. While search engines may suggest alternate queries or reformulations through the use of keyword suggestions or clusters, the search results produced will always be a mix of the animal and the football team.

Step 2: Review the results and select the one that corresponds to your interests. If it’s the Miami Dolphins that you like, click #2: MiamiDolphins.com. If your search is satisfied, great! If not, return to the search results and Surf Canyon will provide you with some “Recommendations”. You may, if you like, also get the “instant” Recommendations by simply clicking the bull’s eye next to the particular link of your choice.

Recommendations are dug out of the search results based on the Discovery Engine’s inference of our real-time intent. Put another way, Surf Canyon figures out what you want and then goes past the first page of the results and fetches it for you.

Step 3: The process is cumulative, so continue clicking on links and bull’s eyes that are of interest to you. The longer you work on the result set, the better Surf Canyon understands your intent and the more accurate are the Recommendations. The Recommendations can nest to three levels, enabling you to “drill down” on not just your high-level intent, but your sub-intents as well, such as “Miami Dolphins news.”

Click on “More Results” and you’ll get a second page of results automatically customized to your intent. In this case, they are naturally all related to the Miami Dolphins football team and are geared towards news.

Keep going and Surf Canyon will keep working to help you find what you need.

That’s Discovery!

Lastly, don’t worry about ‘mistakes’: clicking the links that are perhaps not of interest. Surf Canyon is smart enough to handle it.

The “similar pages” links on Google give users a sampling of websites that are linked to by the same websites linking to that particular result. Confusing? For example, if website A is one of the results and website B links to website A, then clicking on “similar pages” for website A will give you other websites that are linked to by website B. The theory is that if website B is linked to website A then other websites linked to by website B will be “similar” to website A. This is, of course, not necessarily the case and is, perhaps, rarely the case. The Search Engine Watch Forum has a good description of “similar pages”.

Surf Canyon’s Recommendations, on the other hand, are based on implict intent inferred from user behavior and, as a result, are considerably more valuable. Query Discovery™ technology provides the power that enables users to unlock mountains of search results in order to find relevant information buried deep within.