Collaborative web search: a robustness analysis

Collaborative web search utilises past search histories in a community of like-minded users to improve the quality of search results. Search results that have been selected by community members for past queries are promoted in response to similar queries that occur in the future. The I-SPY system is one example of such a collaborative approach to search. As is the case with all open systems, however, it is difficult to establish the integrity of those who access a system and thus the potential for malicious attack exists. In this paper we investigate the robustness of the I-SPY system to attack. In particular, we consider attack scenarios whereby malicious agents seek to promote particular result pages within a community. In addition, we analyse robustness in the context of community homogeneity, and we show that this key characteristic of communities has implications for system robustness.