Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael Maxwell Cameron

Hugh Evan Williams

Sanaz Ahari

Nikhil Dandekar

Nitin Agrawal

Tabreez Govani

Brian W MacDonald

Sarthak D Shah

Yang Yang Zhang

Farid Hosseini

Jamie Paul Buckley

Xiaoxin Yin

Srinath Reddy Aaleti

Liwei Chen

Adam D Troy

Nicholas Eric Craswell

Steve Beck

Hongqiao Li

Alejandro Dominguez

Dan Fain

Ryen William White

Mikhail Bilenko

Amit Aggarwal

Evan Despault

Daniel C Fain

Computer-readable media and computerized methods are provided for identifying terms associated with one or more queries, including aspects directed to manipulating a list of terms associated with a query class by extracting terms, identifying equivalences or relevant terms, and condensing or expanding the list of terms. In embodiments, synonymous terms can be identified. An updated list of terms can be written to a storage location in association with a query or query class.

Identifying terms associated with queries

Methods, computer-storage media, and graphical user interfaces are provided for identifying and presenting rich related sites for task-oriented search queries. Upon receipt of a search query input by a user, one or more query logs are analyzed to determine if the search query is a related to a task being performed by the user. If the query is determined to be a task-oriented search query, search results are identified, as is one or more Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) related to a particular search result. The related URL is presented to the user in association with the particular search result. Additional controls, e.g., search tools that facilitate querying of those URLs determined to be relevant to a particular search result, may also be provided to aid the user in performing the task at hand.

Related URLs for task-oriented query results

Methods are provided for identifying media files that are related to a user-selected media file. Initially, a first set of media files that have previously been determined to be related to the selected media file is identified. It is determined that the number of media files in the first set of media files does not exceed a minimum number. A query is constructed based on the title or description of the selected media file to locate more related media files. A media database is searched and the results are combined with the first set of media files to be displayed.

Providing suggestions of related videos

Presenting one or more suggested search-engine queries based on an initial search-engine query is described herein. Once the initial query is received, a search engine determines whether any web content is relevant thereto. If not, a query-suggestion service determines whether any suggested queries can be substituted for the initial query. If not, the query is spell-corrected, if necessary, and parsed into individual terms. Each parsed term is then checked to see whether it can be associated with alternative search terms. Terms than can are combined and their combination is also checked for alternative search terms. All of the alternative search terms are scored and then assembled into a list of suggested search terms that is presented to the user.

Query suggestions for no result web searches

Computer-readable media and computerized methods for automatically organizing search results according to task groups are provided. The methods involve aggregating a gallery of entities (e.g., search queries that share a common categorization) into a query class and assigning a dictionary (e.g., list of terms that are drawn from various sources) to the query class. The task groups are identified from the list of terms within the dictionary. The process of identification includes analyzing patterns of user search behavior to select terms from the list of terms, which reflect popular user search intents, and ranking the selected terms based on predetermined parameters to produce an ordering. Based on the ordering, a set of the selected terms that are highest ranked are declared the task groups. The task groups are employed to arrange the search results on a UI display and to provide a consistent and intuitive format for refining a search.

Identifying task groups for organizing search results

A computer system, method, and media for associating locations with ranked websites are provided. The computer system includes a search engine, a log database, and a location database that are employed to respond to search requests from users by returning appropriately ranked websites to the user. The websites are ranked using the location of the website and the location of the user to select websites to receive high ranks. Additionally, the search engine includes a correction feature that reevaluates locations for a website or user when a large number of obtained locations suggest a different location than a currently associated location for the website or the user.

Promoting websites based on location

Computer systems, methods, and media improving the relevance of the search results presented to a user for queries having an implicit local intent are provided. Utilizing the systems and methods described herein locally-biased queries are identified, despite such queries being void of any location-specific terms. A location of a computing device associated with the user is determined and localized web search results associated with the data item pair comprising the input query and the user's determined location are generated and presented to the user.

Relevance improvements for implicit local queries

It has been found that user navigation that follows search engine interactions provides implicit endorsement of resources (such as web resources) that are preferred by users, and which may be particularly valuable for exploratory search tasks. Thus, a combination of past searching and browsing user behavior is analyzed to identify additional information that augments search results delivered by a search engine. The additional information may include a display of hyperlinks to locations which are derived from the past searching and browsing user behavior, given a specific input query. The additional information may be provided to supplement web search results.

Using search trails to provide enhanced search interaction

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Michael Maxwell Cameron