Abstract: Data mining systems and methods are disclosed for associating users with items based on underlying personas. The system associates each user account with one or more underlying personas that contribute to the user's interactions with different items, and predicts an active persona for a user based on the user's recent interactions with items and make item related recommendations that are oriented to the active persona. Thus, for example, even though multiple individuals may share a computer and/or account, the content (e.g., item recommendations) presented during a browsing session may be based primarily or exclusively on the past browsing behaviors of the particular individual conducting the browsing session.

Abstract: Data mining systems and methods are disclosed for associating users with items based on underlying personas. The system associates each user account with one or more underlying personas that contribute to the user's interactions with different items, and models user-to-item associations in accordance with the underlying personas based on probabilistic matrix factorization. The system may further predict an active persona for a user based on the user's recent interactions with items and make item related recommendations that are oriented to the active persona.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are described for presenting sponsored search results. A user is enabled to initiate a search from a context. The sponsored search results and organic search results are presented in a search results page in response to the search, an order of the sponsored search results and placement of subsets of the sponsored search results relative to the organic search results in the search results page having been determined with reference to contextual information relating to the context.