Related links recommendation

A computer-implemented process for recommending related web pages to users when they are browsing websites, comprising:

• using a computing device for:
• for each of a set of web pages, associated queries and user behavior data, searching for web pages with the most frequent clicks for the same query to create a feature matrix for query-based collaborative filtering comprising pairs of compared websites and a confidence value, wherein the confidence value is obtained by determining a similarity value for each pair of websites that was clicked by a user for a same query and normalizing the similarity value;
• for each of a set of web pages, associated queries and user behavior data, searching for web pages which have the most frequent co-clicks by users to create a feature matrix for user-based collaborative filtering, comprising pairs of compared websites with the most frequent number of co-clicks by users and a confidence score for each pair, wherein the confidence score is obtained by determining a similarity value of each pair of web pages that were co-clicked by users during searching and browsing during the same user sessions and normalizing the similarity value;
• creating a combined feature matrix by combining the feature matrix for query-based collaborative filtering and user-based collaborative filtering by combining the feature matrix for query-based collaborative filtering and the feature matrix of the user-based collaborative filtering and adding the confidence scores of each pair of web pages to create a final confidence score for each pair of web pages;
• and
• using the combined feature matrix and the final confidence score that computes the similarity between pairs of websites, to recommend a web page related to another web page.

A system for recommending one or more related websites to a user based on a website returned in response to a search query or while browsing, comprising:

• a general purpose computing device;
• a computer program comprising program modules executable by the general purpose computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to,
• compute a query-based collaborative filter based on the number of co-clicks on a websites by users for a given query;
• compute a user-based collaborative filter based on the number of co-clicks by users on a given website during searching and browsing during the same user sessions;
• compute a content-based collaborative filter based on the similarity of content of website pairs;
• combine the query-based collaborative filter, user-based collaborative filter and content-based filter to create a combined collaborative filter, that computes the similarity between pairs of websites, for recommending web pages related to a web page returned in response to a search query.