A method for centrally providing a profile of a user's degree of preference for one or more items across categories in a plurality of domains of interest in a taxonomy of preferences is described. In one embodiment, the method includes identifying a user's degree of preference for an item from a plurality of indicators. The user's degree of preference for the item is associated with a category in a domain of interest and is stored in a profile of the user. In another embodiment, the profile identifies preferences of the user in a taxonomy of preferences across categories in a plurality of domains of interest.