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For me, relevancy is a combination value based on three other attributes:
Topicality, Context and Timeliness.
Many folks put way too much attention on the first part, topicality, then just slightly miss the boat on the second, context. The personal taste or subjective part of relevancy is largely a matter of context. The context of what I already know. The context of where I am. The context of 'why' I have searched, not just 'what' I have searched.
This is why a record of search history can be so valuable to search engines. When someone searches for 'thunderbird' there are so many possible options. Do they mean the car, the TV puppet show, the drink, the email client, the mythical beast, or something else entirely? There isn't enough contextual info in the word alone. Knowing that their previous search was for 'Ford' would naturally supply a good clue to context.
Some engines offer refinement suggestions or sub-phrases to help increase the contextual information provided. This has proven to be a strong help in providing a better overall search experience. User experience is also a great help. More experienced searchers are better at providing more contextual information in their query, and of making more specific queries. Providing the 'advanced search' options helps accelerate this learning process for searchers, showing them ways to easily create more specific queries. To provide more context.
The phrases used may themselves provide a form of context. A simple phrase may provide information that this is not an advanced searcher, and may even be a person looking for a general overview, not yet knowing themselves which aspects they are particularly interested in.
Any skilled PPC advertisers are well aware of this factor. That generic phrases are earlier in the shopping cycle. People looking to see what is available and not yet giving any serious consideration to buying anything. As they get more serious, they add more personal context, like a favourite/trusted brand they'd prefer. Or a price factor (e.g. cheap).
Then there's timeliness. This too can be contextual at times. A search for 'tsunami' now is searching for something different to what would have been sought by that phrase before the disaster. But even when not in context of big events, many searches will want accurate information. Later documents are often (but certainly not always) likely to be more advanced than earlier documents. This is where link popularity becomes a handicap, because it favours older, more established documents over newer, fresher ones.
I do think that search engnes need to provide more 'prompts' for contextual clues. It is the only real method for being able to serve more contextually relevant results.
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