Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Qing Chang

Ravi Chandru Shahani

Zhenghao Wang

Mingyang Zhao

Roman Holenstein

Aditee Kumthekar

Harini Sridharan

Computer-readable media, computer systems, and computing methods are provided for recommending websites that are relevant to a current website to which a user has navigated. A search engine is used to track a set of websites the user has visited immediately prior to the current website, while predictive model(s) are used to generate a sequence of websites that include the current website and the tracked websites. The sequence is compared against strings of websites within a browser-history log to identify matching strings, where the matching strings include the sequence and a respective candidate website. A probability of relevance is computed from a frequency that each of the matching strings has been visited within a predefined time frame. The probability of relevance for each of the matching strings is ranked against one another to distill the highest-ranked matching strings, which are parsed to extract and present the candidate websites included therein.

Predictively suggesting websites

Best-bet recommendation may be provided. User behavior associated with a search result may be logged and applied to a relevance classifier. The relevance classifier may determine whether the user behavior indicates that the search result may comprise a best-bet result. A best-bet result may comprise a result associated with a high confidence that the result may be satisfactory to a user. The relevance classifier may be trained according to past searches and user behavior to improve the confidence on best-bet recommendations. Once confidence in a search result is high enough, future searches on the same query may provide the best-bet result to the searching user.

Best-bet recommendations

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Qing Chang