Yahoo! Inc.

Jagadeshwar R Nomula

Christa Maria Stelzmuller

The disclosure describes search systems and methods in which exact token searches, spelling suggestions, and split-token searches are used in conjunction to return search results to the user. Depending on the number and relevancy of results for the search query results from each of the steps the results are either merged or discarded into the final result set. The split-token search is adapted to generate two split-tokens from the token(s) of the search query in anticipation that the search token(s) is misspelled. As the location of the misspelling is unknown, the split-token search widens the scope of the results provided in response to the search. In an embodiment, the split-token search includes performing a prefix search for tokens matching a prefix split-token and a postfix search for tokens matching a postfix split-token. In an embodiment, the index is specially adapted to allow the postfix search to be performed more efficiently.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States of America

Jagadeshwar R Nomula