Google Inc.

Tomer Shmiel

Dvir Keysar

Yossi Matias

Ziv Bar-Yossef

Eran Ofek

Alexandre Petcherski

Tzvika Hartman

Ugo Di Girolamo

Ori Allon

Gal Chechik

Lev Finkelstein

Eldad Barkai

Shaul Markovitch

Haran Pilpel

Alexander Sobol

Yosi Markovich

Isaac Elias

Yonatan Erez

Dan Guez

Giora Unger

Artiom Myaskouvskey

Itzhak Barokas

Dror Eiger

Vered Cohen

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media are provided for collective reconciliation. In some implementations, a query is received, wherein the query is associated at least in part with a type of entity. One or more search results are caused to be generated based at least in part on the query. Previously generated data is retrieved associated with at least one search result of the one or more of search results, the data comprising one or more entity references in the at least one search result corresponding to the type of entity. The one or more entity references are ranked, and an entity result is selected from the one or more entity references based at least in part on the ranking. An answer to the query is provided based at least in part on the entity result.

Question answering using entity references in unstructured data

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for determining a plurality of sibling search queries for an input search query. In one aspect, a method comprises: receiving an input search query that satisfies a context template comprising a sequence of one or more words and a wildcard, wherein a wildcard represents variable data, wherein the input search query satisfies the context template and comprises a target word sequence that corresponds to the wildcard in the context template; and determining a plurality of sibling search queries for the input search query, wherein each sibling search query satisfies the context template and comprises a sibling word sequence that corresponds to the wildcard in the context template.

Sibling search queries

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media are provided for collective reconciliation. In some implementations, a query is received, wherein the query is associated at least in part with a type of entity. One or more search results are generated based at least in part on the query. Previously generated data is retrieved associated with at least one search result of the one or more of search results, the data comprising one or more entity references in the at least one search result corresponding to the type of entity. The one or more entity references are ranked, and an entity result is selected from the one or more entity references based at least in part on the ranking. An answer to the query is provided based at least in part on the entity result.

One general aspect is described that includes a computer implemented method for generating a pattern graph. The method may include accessing data pertaining to a corpus of web documents. The data may include a plurality of query-document pairs. The method may also include identifying at least one query pattern in the plurality of query-document pairs and the query pattern may be associated with a portion of web documents in the corpus. The method may also include identifying a plurality of sub-phrases in the at least one query pattern, determining, in the corpus of web documents, a plurality of other query patterns that include at least one of the plurality of sub-phrases, and assigning an classifier to the at least one query pattern and each of the plurality of other query patterns that include at least one of the sub-phrases.

Automatic query pattern generation

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for identifying topical entities. In one aspect, a method includes obtaining a plurality of entities that are associated with a first resource; for one or more of the identified entities, receiving search results for a search query derived from the entity; determining that search results for a search query including a particular entity include a specific type of search results; and determining that the particular entity is a topical entity of the first resource based at least in part on the particular entity appearing in a title or a resource locator of the first resource, wherein the topical entity of the first resource represents a predominant topic of the first resource.

Identifying topical entities

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for identifying related questions for a search query is described. One of the methods includes receiving a search query from a user device; obtaining a plurality of search results for the search query provided by a search engine, wherein each of the search results identifies a respective search result resource; determining one or more respective topic sets for each search result resource, wherein the topic sets for the search result resource are selected from previously submitted search queries that have resulted in users selecting search results identifying the search result resource; selecting related questions from a question database using the topic sets; and transmitting data identifying the related questions to the user device as part of a response to the search query.

Generating related questions for search queries

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for refining search queries. In one implementation, a method includes obtaining a submitted search query, and in response to obtaining the search query: obtaining search results responsive to the search query; selecting a document from a group of documents identified by the search results; generating from a subset of one or more entities associated with the document one or more candidates for refined search queries, including: identifying one or more terms in the search query, where the one or more terms occur in the search query in a particular order relative to each other, and combining the one or more terms with the entity to generate a candidate, where the one or more terms occur in the particular order relative to each other; and identifying one or more of the candidates as being refined search queries for providing with the search results.

Refining search queries

Systems and methods provide natural language search results to clear-intent queries. To provide the natural language search results, a system may parse a document from an authoritative source to generate at least one heading-text pair, the text appearing under the heading in the document. The system may assign a topic and a question category to the heading-text pair and store the heading-text pair in a data store keyed by the topic and the question category. The system determines that a query corresponds to the topic and the question category, and provides the heading-text pair as a natural language search result for the query. In some implementations, the text portion of the heading-text pair may be a paragraph or a list of items and the natural language search result may be provided with conventional snippet-based search results in response to the query.

Natural language search results for intent queries

Technology described herein enhances a user's search experience by providing refined search results that are relevant to a displayed document. Contextual search results are obtained which identify a list of documents responsive to a formulated query that is based on the user's search query, as well as one or more supplemental terms that are based on content in the displayed document during user entry of the search query. The contextual search results are then 'refined' by re-ranking the documents in the list, based on the similarity between the user's original search query and terms in these documents. This re-ranking enables contextual search results to be provided that are also highly relevant to the user's informational need.

Query formulation and search in the context of a displayed document

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for identifying central entities. In one aspect, a method includes obtaining candidate entities for a first resource; filtering a first entity graph whose nodes represent different entities found in a plurality of resources to remove nodes that do not correspond to a candidate entity, wherein pairs of nodes in the filtered first entity graph that are connected by an edge correspond to pairs of candidate entities that are associated with the same resource; generating a second entity graph for the first resource from the filtered first entity graph, wherein the second entity graph does not include nodes from the filtered first entity graph that are not connected to other nodes in the filtered first graph; and identifying candidate entities that are represented by nodes in the second entity graph as being central entities for the first resource.

Identifying central entities

The present invention relates to the identification of alternative suggestions which potentially improve on a given query suggestion, without being perceived by a user as being offensively different from the user's query. The alternative suggestions may for example be different query formulations that relate to the same topic as that of the given query suggestion. The technology disclosed uses similarity screening of the given query suggestion against unique queries which do not include the given query suggestion as a prefix, in conjunction with query utility scores representing prior user response to the unique queries.

Growing community of inventors

Ramat Gan, Israel

Tomer Shmiel