Implicit Feedback in Information Retrieval : A Literature Analysis

This literature review provides an overview of the various topics related to using implicit feedback for information retrieval. Specific topics which are addressed are explicit relevance feedback for query expansion and its advantages and disadvantages, user behaviors that provide implicit information to a system, techniques to implement implicit feedback in systems and the advantages and disadvantages of using implicit feedback in information retrieval systems. For behaviors of users that were studied by researchers, this study provides a discussion on whether the researchers found them to be useful or not. A discussion on the techniques with which these behaviors are implemented in systems by researchers is presented to gain an understanding of how these behaviors could be used in a system to interpret the behaviors of users. It is concluded that information retrieval systems utilizing implicit feedback would help users find relevant documents.