Identify the User’s Information Need Using the Current Search Context

Abstract

This paper proposes a solution to a problem frequently asked in the field of the information search on the Web that is the ambiguity of user queries. The exploitation of the current search context of the user in order to identify his information need which is expressed often through short and ambiguous queries constitutes the main contribution of this work. New contextual dimensions are used that are the user’s recent interests and the temporal events that may influence his browsing behavior. The modeling of the user’s browsing behavior taking into account the proposed dimensions gave encouraging preliminary results.