You are not paranoid, someone IS watching...

This post is from from my other blog here

Microsoft’s take on user behavioural data A search related patent released by Microsoft the other day touches on a popular theme of late, (with me at least); user behaviour analysis. In simplest terms, they look at various interactions with the search results (SERPs) and listing pages, to try and determine the relevance of a set of results. This has been a common theme among the Big 3 as noted by these recent posts; Google confirms using query analysis (http://www.huomah.com/Search-Engines/Algorithm-Matters/Query-analysis-confirmed-as-Google-ranking-signal.html)– use of past queries in the regular indexGoogle on User Performance Metrics (http://www.huomah.com/search-engines/algorithm-matters/beware:-google-is-watching-you.html) – trio of patents on the subjectYahoo Personalized PageRank (http://www.huomah.com/search-engines/algorithm-matters/yahoo-page-rank-and-teleportation-oh-my.html)– user behaviour and PageRankYahoo on Personalized Networks (http://www.huomah.com/Search-Engines/Algorithm-Matters/Yahoo-to-improve-social-searching-through-trusted-networks.html) – user annotations used to populate networksSearch system using user behaviour data (http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1 Sect2=HITOFF d=PALL p=1 u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm r=1 f=G l=50 s1=7,363,282.PN. OS=PN/7,363,282 RS=PN/7,363,282)- Filed; December 2003 – Published; April 22 2008