Information retrieval (IR) is the process through which a computer system can respond to a user's query for text-based information on a specific topic. IR was one of the first and remains one of the most important problems in the domain of natural language processing (NLP).

Web search is the application of information retrieval techniques to the largest corpus of text anywhere — the web — and it is the context where many people interact with IR systems most frequently.

In this course, we will cover basic and advanced techniques for building text-based information systems, including the following topics:

• Retrieval Models
• Evaluation
• Efficient Text Indexing and Searching
  
• Text Classification
• IR for the Web: Crawling and Link Analysis
• Traditional and machine learning-based ranking approaches
• Web Search
• Recommender Systems
• Web Analytics