Abstract: A system for ranking search results obtained from an information retrieval system includes a search pre-processor, a search engine and a search post-processor. The search preprocessor determines the context of the search query by comparing the terms in the search query with a predetermined user context profile. Preferably, the context profile is a user profile or a community profile, which includes a set of terms which have been rated by the user, community, or a recommender system. The search engine generates a search result comprising at least one item obtained from the information retrieval system. The search post-processor ranks each item returned in the search result in accordance with the context of the search query.

Abstract: A system and method of providing predicted user ratings includes calculating the accuracy of predictions based on the variance of distribution of the predicted user's rating. The system and method present and rank the results by treating the variance as a source of noise. The decision to present or not to present an item is made by sampling the probability distribution of the predicted rating and comparing the result to some user-set threshold (e.g., “show me all results that the system predicts I will score 3 or higher”) or a system default value.