recommendation engine

A recommendation engine is a type of search engine that makes suggestions to the end user that might be of interest to him. This can be a book or a music CD, an article, clothing or a job offer.

Recommendation engines are software systems that serve a specific purpose. They make predictions about user interest and select the appropriate product or article from the extensive web offering. For their computing operations, they use data mining, machine learning, statistical and predictive analyses, and analyze previous user behavior and purchasing patterns. The huge, confusing volumes of data are reduced by filtering out possible results that are recommended to the user.

At Amazon, the procedure can be observed very well. As soon as a prospective customer visits the Amazon website, books are recommended to him from the subject areas he was interested in during his last visit. Recommendation engines analyze the collected data that a prospect has left behind during his previous visits, as well as that of other visitors with similar interests.