How does the "Favorite Tags" feature on stackoverflow work?

Question

I'm wondering how the "Favorite Tags" feature works on stackoverflow. I found that the question list is somehow filtered by my favorite tags, but it doesn't simply list only questions that have one of those tags, because I see some of the questions do not have any of my favorite tags.

It seems like stackoverflow also uses relevant tags (tags that are relevant to my favorite tags) to do the filtering. If so, how does it select relevant tags? Is it done by checking if two tags are used together many times on the same questions?

Answer 1

see

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/stack-overflow-homepage-changes/

for details; the home page is indeed customized for users with favorites, or users with browsing patterns so regular that we can reliably infer favorite tags.

Answer 2

When you view the list of questions, questions that belong to your favorite tags are highlighted. Also the tags that belong to your favorite tags will appear on top of the "recent tags" block on the right side.

It just ads some personalization to the site, so a person with certain set of favorite tags will see slightly different content than another person when they both visit the home page.

It's actually very useful feature.

Answer 3

You add tags you're interested in and when you click one, you will view questions with that tag.