Naver Self-Regulation Committee Recommends Improvements to Shopping Search Algorithm

Naver announced on the 24th that it held the 3rd regular meeting of the 'Naver User Protection and Self-Regulation Committee.'

At this meeting, discussions were held on the need to enhance the shopping search service algorithm through the advancement of the shopping search service and strengthening sellers' digital literacy, as well as the necessity to upgrade Naver Datalab.

The meeting was attended by Kwon Heon-yeong, professor at Korea University Graduate School of Information Security and chairman of the Naver Self-Regulation Committee, along with other committee members, Lee Ji-na, Global Retail Media leader responsible for Naver Shopping Search advertising planning, Son Deok-man, head of search backend planning for the shopping search service, and Son Ji-yoon, head of policy strategy.

The Naver Self-Regulation Committee emphasized the need for multifaceted efforts to enhance platform trustworthiness, including strengthening the shopping search algorithm and securing diversity in statistical information from Naver Datalab.

The search algorithm that determines the exposure ranking of Naver Shopping search results is based on three factors: relevance, reliability, and popularity, optimizing the arrangement of products to meet users' needs. The committee recommended continuously considering indicators that better reflect actual user preferences and product evaluations to improve the quality of search results. They also suggested supplementing related explanations to increase users' understanding of the Naver Shopping algorithm.

Additionally, opinions were shared on the need to enhance Naver Datalab content and strengthen education for sellers to improve the digital literacy of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). Launched in 2016, Naver Datalab provides in-depth statistical information such as popular search terms by category, regional interest, comment statistics, and shopping category search trends, helping sellers with startup and business operations.

Meanwhile, the Naver Self-Regulation Committee, established last September to protect users and improve services, discussed measures to minimize counterfeit damage and prevent dark patterns in its 1st and 2nd meetings, respectively.

The committee plans to release a performance report in the first half of this year, detailing Naver’s self-regulation and cooperative activities to autonomously improve service quality and user support. The report will include agenda items discussed by the four subcommittees under the Platform Private Self-Regulatory Organization (Gap-Eul Subcommittee, Consumer/User Subcommittee, Innovation Sharing/Governance Subcommittee, Data/AI Subcommittee), as well as Naver’s self-regulation efforts such as minimizing counterfeit products, preventing dark patterns, and responding to fake reviews recommended and improved by the Self-Regulation Committee.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.