Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Bhuvan Middha

Krysta Marie Svore

Christopher J C Burges

Oludare Victor Obasanjo

Gaurav Sareen

Girish Kumar

Gu Xu

Qi Yao

Janine Crumb

Sambavi Muthukrishnan

Elbio Renato Torres Abib

Thomas William Finley

Weiqing Tu

Silviu Petru Cucerzan

Tanton Holt Gibbs

Rui Zhou

Herbert De Melo Duarte

Pankesh Jhaveri

Kyrylo Tropin

Dehu Qi

Ka Cheung Sia

Sandeep Dey

Jason Douglas

Junbiao Tang

A computer-implemented technique is described herein for assisting an administrative user in generating negative feature information. The negative feature information, which includes a list of negative features (e.g., negative keywords), defines when queries submitted by end users are expressly disqualified as matching one or more parts of an identified web resource. The technique then automatically assesses the manner in which the negative feature information conflicts with matching between the queries submitted by end users and positive trigger information associated with the web resource, to provide conflict output information. The technique then modifies the negative feature information based on the conflict output information, e.g., by eliminating one or more negative keywords that contribute to conflicts.

Controlling use of negative features in a matching operation

Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media are provided for utilizing part-of-speech (POS) tagging of both the words included in a search query and the words included in potential search result documents to improve query alteration accuracy and search result ranking. Upon receiving a search query, POS tags are assigned to the words comprising the query to create query word-tag pairs. The query word-tag pairs are utilized to reformulate the query and are compared with document word-tag pairs included in a plurality of potential search result documents to determine a degree of similarity. The degree of similarity is utilized as an input in scoring and/or ranking the relevance of the potential search result documents with respect to one another.

Part-of-speech tagging for ranking search results

Described is a technology for identifying sample data items (e.g., documents corresponding to query-URL pairs) having the greatest likelihood of being mislabeled when previously judged, and selecting those data items for re-judging. In one aspect, lambda gradient scores (information associated with ranked sample data items that indicates a relative direction and how 'strongly' to move each data item for lowering a ranking cost) are summed for pairs of sample data items to compute re-judgment scores for each of those sample data items. The re-judgment scores indicate a relative likelihood of mislabeling. Once the selected sample data items are re-judged, a new training set is available, whereby a new ranker may be trained.

Identification of sample data items for re-judging

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for a method of propagating signals across a web graph. A signal describes a document or otherwise provides useful information about a document in a web graph. A web graph is a collection of documents that are related to one another through links, such as hyperlinks. The signals are propagated in the sense that information from the related pages is associated with the target page even though the information may not be directly found in the target page. This information may then be used by a search engine to determine that a particular page is relevant to a search query.

Propagating signals across a web graph

Computerized methods and systems for generating a suggested query list with suggested search terms displayed as highlighted text utilizing a user-defined query are provided. Query search terms are received by a user-interface display. Upon inputting query search terms, the user-interface automatically generates a suggested query list. The suggested query list is associated with the query search term and the suggested query list is comprised of at least one suggested search term. A query suggestion architecture determines if the query search term and the suggested search term are a match, and if so, highlights the suggested search term that is not a match. The user interface displays the highlighted terms to assist in refining a search. The present invention further provides a stemming algorithm that extracts the root form of the query search term.

Support for reverse and stemmed hit-highlighting

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Bhuvan Middha