SYNOPSIS OF A SEARCH LOG THAT RESPECTS USER PRIVACY

Described is releasing output data representing a search log, in which the data is suitable for most data mining/analysis applications, but is safe to publish by preserving user privacy. The search log is processed such that a query is only included if a sufficient count of that query is present; noise may be added. User contributions that are considered may be limited to a maximum number of queries. The output may indicate how often (possibly plus noise) that each query appeared. Other output may comprise a query-action graph, a query-inaction graph and/or a query-reformulation graph, with nodes representing queries and nodes representing actions, inactions or reformulations (e.g., clicked URLs, skipped URLs, or selected related queries), and edges between nodes representing action, skip or selection counts (possibly plus noise). The output may correspond to the top results/related queries returned from a search.