---
title: "Collaborative Web Search"
authors:
  - "Barry Smyth"
  - "Evelyn Balfe"
  - "Peter Briggs"
  - "Maurice Coyle"
  - "Jill Freyne"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2003/221"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2003/0221.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2003
pages: "1417-1418"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Collaborative Web Search

Barry Smyth, Evelyn Balfe, Peter Briggs, Maurice Coyle, Jill Freyne

*Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 1417-1418.

## Abstract

Web search engines struggle to satisfy the needs of Web users. Users are notoriously poor at representing their needs in the form of a query, and search engines are poor at responding to vague queries. However progress has been made by introducing context into the search process. In this paper we describe and evaluate a novel approach to using context in Web search that adapts a generic search engine for the needs of a specialist community of users. This collaborative search method enjoys significant performance benefits and avoids the privacy and security concerns that are commonly associated with related personalization research.