Click Models for Web Search

Click models, probabilistic models of the interaction behavior of search engine users, have been studied extensively by the information retrieval community in recent years. We now have a handful of click models, parameter estimation methods, evaluation principles and applications of click models, that form the building blocks of ongoing research efforts in the area. Moreover, click models appear in many areas of IR, such as ranking, evaluation, user simulation, etc. This course is based on a recently published book on click models (http://clickmodels.weebly.com/the-book.html) and covers a wide range of topics: from basic to advanced and neural click models and from click model estimation and evaluation techniques to applications of click models. Most topics are augmented with live demos, where the participants can try the presented material in practice. Also, the course features two practical sessions, where the participants have a chance to implement a basic and an advanced click models using open-source tools and publicly available datasets with click logs. The course will be useful as an overview for anyone starting research work in IR as well as for practitioners seeking concrete recipes. More details about the course are available at http://clickmodels.weebly.com/russir-2016-course.html. The setup for following live demos and practical sessions is outlined in http://clickmodels.weebly.com/russir-2016-setup.html.