1. A method comprising: receiving a query q from a particular user u who intends to find results that satisfy the query q with respect to a topic T u , the particular user u being characterized by user information θ u ; producing a generic topic distribution Pr r (T|q) associated with the query q that is germane to a population of generic users; producing a user-specific query-dependent topic distribution Pr(T u |q,θ u ) associated with the query q for the particular user u; generating personalized results for the particular user u based on the generic topic distribution Pr r (T|q) and the user-specific query-dependent topic distribution Pr(T u |q,θ u ); and forwarding the personalized results to the particular user u.
1. A method comprising: receiving a query q from a particular user u who intends to find results that satisfy the query q with respect to a topic T u , the particular user u being characterized by user information θ u ; producing a generic topic distribution Pr r (T|q) associated with the query q that is germane to a population of generic users; producing a user-specific query-dependent topic distribution Pr(T u |q,θ u ) associated with the query q for the particular user u; generating personalized results for the particular user u based on the generic topic distribution Pr r (T|q) and the user-specific query-dependent topic distribution Pr(T u |q,θ u ); and forwarding the personalized results to the particular user u. 9. The method of claim 1 , wherein said generating of the personalized results is based on application of a ranking function, expressed as rel score=obs(d,q)*reweighting factor, wherein obs(d,q) is a score generated by search engine functionality for a particular document d, with respect to the query q submitted by the particular user u, reweighting factor is a factor, based on at least the generic topic distribution Pr r (T|q) and the user-specific query-dependent topic distribution Pr(T u |q,θ u ), which modifies obs(d,q), and rel score is a modified score produced by multiplying obs(d,q) by the reweighting factor.