Personalizing the Web Using Site Descriptions

The information overload on the Web has created a great need for efficient filtering mechanisms. Many sites (e.g., CNN and Quicken) address this problem by allowing a user to create personalized pages that contain only inforamation that is of interest to the user. We propose a new approach for personalization that improves on existing services in three significant ways: the user can create personalized pages with information from any site (and he/she is not restricted to sites that offer personalization); personalized pages may contain information from multiple Web sites (e.g., a user can create a personalized page that contains not only news categories from his/her favorite news sources, but also information about the prices of a set of interesting stocks, and weather information for a particular city); and users have more privacy since they are not required to sign up for the service.