Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Pratibha Permandla

Gaurav Sareen

Abhas Kumar

Anna Timasheva

Deepak Shankar

Yinzhe Yu

William Ramsey

Girish Kumar

Walter Sun

Jay Goyal

Jingfeng Li

Rohit Wad

Junhua Wang

Guarav Sareen

Systems and methods for regularly updating portions of a merged index are provided. Initially, upon receiving an indication that modifications have occurred to content of web-based documents, dynamic update of index (DUI) objects that identify the documents and expose the modified content are composed by ascertaining relative positions of the modified content within the documents, and packaging identifiers of the documents, the relative positions, and metadata underlying the modified content into a message. The DUI objects are applied to an overloading index that maintains structured records of recent modifications. In particular, portions of the overloading index are targeted utilizing the document identifiers and the relative positions specified by the DUI object, thereby updating the targeted portions within the overloading index corresponding to the modified content without rewriting the entire overloading index. Periodically, an association process is invoked for grouping the merged index with the overloading index for search purposes.

Updating an inverted index in a real time fashion

Systems and methods for performing an updating process to an in-memory index are provided. Upon receiving notice of document modifications covered by an inverted index associated with a search engine, in the form of an update file, a representation of the modification is published onto various index serving machines. Each index serving machine receiving the update file determines if the modifications are applicable to the index serving machine. If an index serving machine determines that it contains mapping information corresponding to the modified documents, the index serving machine utilizes the update file and associated mapping information to update an in-memory index. In embodiments, the in-memory index is used to provide results to user queries in tandem with the inverted index. In some embodiments, an extra in-memory index is maintained that is revised with constantly incoming metadata updates and the existing in-memory index is periodically swapped with the revised in-memory index.

Rapid update of index metadata

Systems and methods for applying user behavior data to improve search query result ranking are provided. Upon receiving an update file indicating that recent, significant user behavior data is available for a document associated with an inverted index, the update file is published periodically and frequently to an index server. After filtering out the relevant update information from the update file, the index server extracts identifiers of the documents having the associated user behavior data. The update file and the identifier of the documents are utilized to update an in-memory index containing representations of metadata indicative of the user behavior. The in-memory index is continuously updated and utilized to serve search query results in response to user search queries. Search query results from the in-memory index are ranked using the user behavior data prior to serving. Thus, results associated with recent, significant user-behavior metadata receive prominent placement on the search results page.

Using behavior data to quickly improve search ranking

Systems and methods are provided for regularly updating a web index with new or updated content, such as meta words or meta streams, for a particular web page address, such as a URL. Web page addresses and associated updated information, such as meta words, meta streams, values, and locations in the web index for those meta words are received. In order to update a web index, which is used by search engines to search web documents, a document identification is retrieved and associated with the updated information. As information in the web index is stored by document identification and not by web page addresses, the document identification may replace the web page address. Each meta word received is matched with corresponding document identifications and associated updated information, which creates an inverted format of the information. The web index may now be updated and stored by the system.

Dynamic update of a web index

Systems, methods, computer-readable media, and graphical user interfaces for presenting search results having collapsed domains are provided. A search result obtaining module obtains search results based upon a received query. Upon obtaining the search results, search results having the same domain are associated with one another. Thereafter, search result clusters of associated search results are formed. In some embodiments, the search result clusters may be formatted to include desired search result cluster attributes. The search result clusters are presented such that two or more associated search results form a single cluster of search results rather than being presented individually. In some embodiments, an option to view more search results with the same domain may be provided.

Domain collapsing of search results

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Pratibha Permandla