Over-personalization occurs when adapting search results to user history or inferred preferences overwhelms relevance for the current query and reduces user control. section 9.5
Personalization should remain within the query’s relevant scope. Applying signals across unrelated categories can produce strange results, while boosting every query with all prior interactions can make search unusable. section 9.5
Practical safeguards include:
- Model relationships between item and query categories, then apply preferences only to related results. section 9.5
- Personalize only a few top results so non-personalized results remain available when adaptation is wrong. section 9.5
- Provide a way to turn personalization off and collect explicit or implicit feedback as interests change. section 9.5
Why scope matters
A search for “white paper” or “white light bulbs” should not automatically bias a later appliance search toward white refrigerators. Liking The Terminator should not imply interest in guns or robot vacuums. section 9.5
