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The purpose of modeling document relevance for search engines is to rank better in subsequent searches. Document-specific historical click-through rates can be important features in a dynamic ranking system which updates as we accumulate…
Algorithms that favor popular items are used to help us select among many choices, from engaging articles on a social media news feed to songs and books that others have purchased, and from top-raked search engine results to highly-cited…
This paper presents an approach to identify efficient techniques used in Web Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Understanding SEO factors which can influence page ranking in search engine is significant for webmasters who wish to attract…
Ranking algorithms play a crucial role in online platforms ranging from search engines to recommender systems. In this paper, we identify a surprising consequence of popularity-based rankings: the fewer the items reporting a given signal,…
In content recommender systems such as TikTok and YouTube, the platform's recommendation algorithm shapes content producer incentives. Many platforms employ online learning, which generates intertemporal incentives, since content produced…
It is hard to detect important articles in a specific context. Information retrieval techniques based on full text search can be inaccurate to identify main topics and they are not able to provide an indication about the importance of the…
The crucial role of the evaluation in the development of the information retrieval tools is useful evidence to improve the performance of these tools and the quality of results that they return. However, the classic evaluation approaches…
Current topic models often suffer from discovering topics not matching human intuition, unnatural switching of topics within documents and high computational demands. We address these concerns by proposing a topic model and an inference…
Recent research on conversational search highlights the importance of mixed-initiative in conversations. To enable mixed-initiative, the system should be able to ask clarifying questions to the user. However, the ability of the underlying…
Document ranking experiments should be repeatable. However, the interaction between multi-threaded indexing and score ties during retrieval may yield non-deterministic rankings, making repeatability not as trivial as one might imagine. In…
Why do some things succeed in the marketplace of ideas? While some argue that content drives success, others suggest that style, or the way ideas are presented, also plays an important role. To provide a stringent test of style's…
The power of digital platforms is at the center of major ongoing policy and regulatory efforts. To advance existing debates, we designed and executed an experiment to measure the performative power of online search providers. Instantiated…
Online platforms mediate access to opportunity: relevance-based rankings create and constrain options by allocating exposure to job openings and job candidates in hiring platforms, or sellers in a marketplace. In order to do so responsibly,…
Ranking algorithms are deployed widely to order a set of items in applications such as search engines, news feeds, and recommendation systems. Recent studies, however, have shown that, left unchecked, the output of ranking algorithms can…
Information availability affects people's behavior and perception of the world. Notably, people rely on search engines to satisfy their need for information. Search engines deliver results relevant to user requests usually without being or…
As more content generated by large language models (LLMs) floods into the Internet, information retrieval (IR) systems now face the challenge of distinguishing and handling a blend of human-authored and machine-generated texts. Recent…
In-degree, PageRank, number of visits and other measures of Web page popularity significantly influence the ranking of search results by modern search engines. The assumption is that popularity is closely correlated with quality, a more…
Sponsored search is an indispensable business model and a major revenue contributor of almost all the search engines. From the advertisers' side, participating in ranking the search results by paying for the sponsored search advertisement…
Users rely on search engines for information in critical contexts, such as public health emergencies. Understanding how users evaluate the trustworthiness of search results is therefore essential. Research has identified rank and the…
When interacting with information retrieval (IR) systems, users, affected by confirmation biases, tend to select search results that confirm their existing beliefs on socially significant contentious issues. To understand the judgments and…