1. What is UCAIR Toolbar?
UCAIR (pronounced as "you care") Toolbar is an Internet Explorer (IE) plugin that supports personalized
search in a privacy-preserving manner. It was developed as part of the UCAIR Project.
It can collect a user's search history including past queries and clickthrough information (viewed URLs) and use such information to infer a user's interests and information needs.
It can then use such knowledge to benefit a user by
improving the ranking of search results.
The picture on the right shows how UCAIR can re-rank search results from Google and optimize search results for a user searching information about the Jaguar car using the query "jaguar".
The left side shows the original mixed results with pages about Jaguar cars and Jaguar software. The right side shows the automatically re-ranked results by UCAIR after the user has viewed the 2nd page, which is about Jaguar car. The new results no longer have pages about the Jaguar software; instead, two new pages about Jaguar cars have been pushed up by UCAIR, which were originally ranked down in the results from Google.
2. Download
- [May 10, 2007] Beta version (support search via Yahoo! Search API): MSI
After you install it, you should see the UCAIR toolbar in the top panel of the Internet Explorer.
If you don't see the toolbar after installation, you may need to explore the Internet Explorer options to turn on the toolbar; it's often under "Tools". When you search using the toolbar search box, the toolbar will dynamically rerank search results based on your clickthrough activities.
- We are currently adding more advanced personalized search algorithms to the toolbar.
