Towards context-based search engine selection

The PRISM source selection system is presented, which aims to improve query results by using knowledge of a user's current activities to select search engines relevant to their information needs, exploiting the proliferation of high-quality special-purpose search services.

Abstract

A well-known problem for web search is targeting search on information that satis es users ' information needs. User queries tend to be short, and hence often ambiguous, which can lead to inappropriate results from general-purpose search engines. This has led to a number of methods for narrowing queries by adding information. This paper presents an alternative approach that aims to improve query results by using knowledge of a user's current activities to select search engines relevant totheir information needs, exploiting the proliferation of high-quality special-purpose search services. The paper introduces the prism source selection system and describes its approach. It then describes two initial experiments testing the system's methods.