On Fuzzy Result Merging for Metasearch

The result merging problem for metasearch engines is to combine multiple result lists, returned by search engines, in response to a query, so as to achieve optimal aggregation. Here we propose three result merging models for metasearch that apply Yager´s fuzzy aggregation OWA operator to result merging and extend the OWA model for metasearch proposed by Diaz. These are the importance guided OWA (IGOWA), the algebraic t-norm OWA, and the algebraic t-norm IGOWA models. While the first two are based on Yager´s extension of the OWA operator, the third is a combination of the features of the first two. We compare the performance of our models to Diaz´s OWA model and the Borda-Fuse and Weighted Borda-Fuse models proposed by Aslam and Montague.