The Paradox of Personalization: Does Task Prediction Require Individualized Models?

We explore the gap between 1) statistically significant relationships between task and browsing behavior and 2) predicting task type from such behaviors. Previous literature has shown relationships between Web browsing behavior and person»s corresponding search task. We find statistically significant browser features for detecting task - comparing the features to previous literature - and apply this knowledge to task classification of search sessions. Even though significant features improve prediction over baselines, it is not by much. We suggest that a more subtle treatment of such features should go beyond statistical significance. In some cases, considering personal patterns may be required for effective prediction.