Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Other

David D Ahn

Franco Salvetti

Giovanni Lorenzo Thione

Michael Paul Bieniosek

Martin Henk Van Den Berg

Richard Stamford Crouch

Riccardo Turchetto

Andrea Ryerson Burbank

Livia Polanyi

Barney Pell

Daniel Marantz

Scott A Prevost

Olga Iosifovna Gurevich

Tejas Girish Nadkarni

Krishnan Thazhathekalam

Toby Takeo Sterrett

Ian Collins

Christopher Jon Jewell

Andrei Peter Makhanov

Tracy Holloway King

Valerie Nygaard

Gianluca Donato

Grigor Shirakyan

David Simpson

James Michael Reinhold

Joanna Mun Yee Chan

Ying Tu

Timothy McDonnell Converse

Christian Biemann

Feng Pan

Hamed Esfahani

Methods and computer-readable media for associating words or groups of words distilled from content, such as reported speech or an attitude report, of a document to form semantic relationships collectively used to generate a semantic representation of the content are provided. Semantic representations may include elements identified or parsed from a text portion of the content, the elements of which may be associated with other elements that share a semantic relationship, such as an agent, location, or topic relationship. Relationships may also be developed by associating one element that is in relation to, or is about, another element, thereby allowing for rapid and effective comparison of associations found in a semantic representation with associations derived from queries. The semantic relationships may be determined based on semantic information, such as potential meanings and grammatical functions of each element within the text portion of the content.

Identification of semantic relationships within reported speech

Architecture that enables an optional display of a longer version of each subsnippet in response to user interactions such as clicking, hovering, or other suitable form of interaction. More specifically, options are provided to display additional text from a search result at the point where a subsnippet (a subsegment in a snippet that is delimited by ellipses) ends. Selecting suitable boundaries for both initial subsnippets and expanded subsnippets enables relevant information to be presented and increased readability.

Subsnippet handling in search results

Architecture that uses content from off-page data sources such as feeds (e.g., yellow pages, coupons, social networks, commerce, etc.) to present additional, relevant information in association with search results. The additional and relevant information is directly relevant to the implicit task the user is trying to accomplish. The architecture includes online and offline mechanisms that identify an entity represented on a web page and look-up information related to that entity in disparate data sources. Relevance heuristics are employed to determine which of the available entity data to show in the caption given the user query, the web page, and the underlying user task (other known information about the user such as geographic location).

Use of off-page content to enhance captions with additional relevant information

Architecture that inserts one or more label items in search result entries. In addition to the typical search result caption (title, snippet, and link), the architecture includes the label component of one or more of the label items in the result entry. The number and type of label annotations are based on the query. When a particular label item is selected (e.g., hover, mouse click), a presentation component (e.g., expansion object, pop-up window) launches proximate to a label item in response to interaction with the label item and presents additional information from the target webpage. The additional information can include an action and data related to the search result entry and the target webpage. The data can be obtained from a data source other than the target webpage.

Automatic information presentation of data and actions in search results

The present technology is related to identifying, from within a corpus of documents, a subject (e.g., person, location, date, etc.) that is relevant to a topic and that is usable to enhance a topic-describing document. Documents within the corpus of documents share a link structure, such that some documents include hyperlinks that enable navigation to the topic-describing document, and the topic-describing document includes hyperlinks that enable navigation to other documents. Text of documents within the corpus is parsed to identify the subject, and a context of the subject suggests a degree of relevance of the subject to the topic. An enhancement type of the subject is determined, and a version of the topic-describing document is enhanced to include a presentation of the subject.

Enhancing a document with supplemental information from another document

Systems, methods, and computer storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that facilitate generation of snippets. In embodiments, text features within a keyword-sentence window are identified. The text features are utilized to determine break features that indicate favorability of breaking at a particular location of the keyword-sentence window. The break features are used to recognize features of partial snippets such that a snippet score to indicate the strength of the partial snippet can be calculated. Snippet scores associated with partial snippets are compared to select an optimal snippet, that is, the snippet having the highest snippet score.

Generating snippets based on content features

Technologies are described herein for coreference resolution in an ambiguity-sensitive natural language processing system. Techniques for integrating reference resolution functionality into a natural language processing system can processes documents to be indexed within an information search and retrieval system. Ambiguity awareness features, as well as ambiguity resolution functionality, can operate in coordination with coreference resolution. Annotation of coreference entities, as well as ambiguous interpretations, can be supported by in-line markup within text content or by external entity maps. Information expressed within documents can be formally organized in terms of facts, or relationships between entities in the text. Expansion can support applying multiple aliases, or ambiguities, to an entity being indexed so that all of the possibly references or interpretations for that entity are captured into the index. Alternative stored descriptions can support retrieval of a fact by either the original description or a coreferential description.

Coreference resolution in an ambiguity-sensitive natural language processing system

Answers are provided to users in response to queries as a supplement to any responsive documents. Query formats for entity and attribute combinations are identified. The query formats can be substituted with entity and attribute combinations that have a corresponding attribute value to form a list of answered queries. The attribute value corresponding to an answered query can be provided when a query is received that matches an answered query.

Query pattern generation for answers coverage expansion

Concept disambiguation is provided for search queries by analyzing search results in conjunction with an ontology of concepts. An ontology of concepts is identified, and at least one document is associated with each concept. The document associated with a concept is representative of the concept and used to generate a concept signature. When a search query is received, it is processed to obtain search results. The search results are used to generate a search results signature, which is compared to the concept signatures to identify one or more concepts that are relevant to the search query.

Concept disambiguation via search engine search results

Referring expressions are identified for concepts by analyzing search query and result selection information. An ontology of concepts is identified, and at least one document is associated with each concept. The document associated with a concept is representative of the concept. Search query information from a search engine is analyzed to identify search queries that resulted in user selections of documents associated with the concepts. Referring expressions that refer to the concepts are identified based on the search queries that resulted in user selections of documents corresponding with the concepts. After identifying referring expressions for concepts, search queries may be mapped to referring expressions to identify concepts to which the search queries pertain, and search result pages may be generated based on knowledge of the concepts.

Indentifying referring expressions for concepts

Computer-readable media and a computing device are described for providing geotemporal search and a search interface therefor. A search interface having a location portion and a timeline portion is provided. A geographic area is selected in the location portion by adjusting the visible area of a map. A temporal window is selected in the timeline portion by adjusting sliders along a timeline to a desired start and end time. The start and end times can be in the past, present, or future. A geotemporal search is executed based on the selected geographic area and temporal window to identify search results having associated metadata indicating a relationship to the selected geographic area and temporal window. One or more search terms are optionally provided to further refine the geotemporal search.

Geotemporal search

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David D Ahn