Abstract: Web Search engines are designed to help their users to find information on the World Wide Web (WWW). However, ‘generic’ search engines are not capable to identify the specific needs of the individual user. These search engines have the same treatment to all users irrespective of their individual need for information. This problem can be solved using “Personalization”. Personalization has the capability to give different search results for different users based on parameters like their interest, preference and knowledge. To meet this requirement, there is a need to capture user’s personal information – therefore, certain users may not want to disclose it. Therefore, “privacy” is a major concern. To provide privacy to the user’s information in Personalized Web Search application, a framework called “User Customizable Privacy-Preserving Search” is discussed. Two runtime generalizations of profiles called Greedy DP and Greedy IL are conversed and it is found that Greedy IL performs better than Greedy DP in terms of response time. Slicing technique is implemented at the proxy side for prevention from attacks that may disclose user’s personal information.

Keywords: Personalized Web Search (PWS), Private Information Retrieval (PIR), Search Engine Web Search, Wrapper