Patent ID: 8346749

Claim:
A method comprising: providing a set of attributes to a search engine for use in connection with personalized searching, wherein the set of attributes comprises a plurality of subsets of attributes, and wherein each attribute is a user-specific variable or a query-specific variable; determining, for each subset of attributes, a respective value to a user of sharing a respective subset of attributes for use in connection with personalized searching, the respective value being indicative of an improvement in search results when considering the respective subset of attributes relative to search results when failing to consider the respective subset of attributes; determining, for the respective subset of attributes, a respective cost to the user of sharing the respective subset of attributes for use in connection with personalized searching, the respective cost based on a probability that the user is identifiable based upon the respective subset of attributes; utilizing a processor to compute a respective net benefit to the user of sharing the respective subset of attributes, the respective net benefit to the user being computed by the processor based at least in part upon the respective value and the respective cost to the user of sharing the respective subset of attributes; and selecting a subset of attributes from the plurality of subset of attributes for use by the search engine when performing the personalized searching based at least in part upon the respective net benefit computed for the subset of attributes.