Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Yinzhe Yu

Gaurav Sareen

Jay Goyal

Walter Sun

Pratibha Permandla

Jingfeng Li

Vinay Deshpande

Lin Guo

Michael Isard

Junaid Ahmed

Abhishek Kumar Singh

Girish Kumar

Qinghua Zou

Utkarsh Jain

Neil Sharman

Abhas Kumar

Vibhaakar Sharma

Daniel Yuan

Brahm Kiran Singh

Pei Pei

Wee Wah Alfian Tan

Guarav Sareen

Thomas Arthur Ledbetter

Methods, systems, and computer-storage media for improving the freshness, or the apparent freshness, of search results are described. In an embodiment, the first portion of search results presented on a search results page are based on responsiveness to the search query and a second portion of results describe only recently published documents that are responsive to the search query. In an embodiment, a more recent version of the document, which is not directly used to determine responsiveness, is used to build the caption for a search result. Another way to make search results appear fresh is to include a publication time within the search result caption. In one embodiment, the publication time is generated by calculating a point in time between when a document is first added to a search index and the previous time the search engine visited the site where the document was found.

Enhancing freshness of search results

A search engine system is described herein that provides an alternative data path for collecting results provided by index servers. The alternative data path collects the results in a direct and asynchronous manner; this is in contrast to a synchronous path used to deliver search results to end users via one or more aggregator modules. An analysis system can use the alternative data path to collect a large amount of richly descriptive information regarding the performance of the search engine system, circumventing bottlenecks and other constraints that would otherwise be imposed by the synchronous data path. The analysis system can analyze the information collected from the index servers to improve the performance of the search engine system.

Extraction of rich search information from index servers via an alternative asynchronous data path

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

Methods, systems, and media are provided for an optimized search engine index. The optimized index is formed by merging small lower level indexes of fresh documents together into a hierarchical cluster of multiple higher level indexes. The optimized index of fresh documents is formed via a single threaded process, while a fresh index serving platform concurrently serves fresh queries. The hierarchy of higher level indexes is formed by merging lower and/or higher level indexes with similar expiration times together. Therefore, as some indexes expire, the remaining un-expired indexes can be re-used and merged with new incoming indexes. The single threaded process provides fast serving of fresh documents, while also providing time to integrate the fresh indexes into a long term primary search engine index, prior to expiring.

Hierarchical merging for optimized index

The embodiments contemplate a system and method for obtaining related results for a portion of a query and for generating an updated set of queries for a cache of a server. Other queries beginning with the portion of the query may be identified and obtained from a data structure that includes a server cache and a set of common queries. Once the other queries are identified, results for the other queries are obtained from the server cache or from a back-end database. A set of common queries, which may include deleted and additional queries, may be utilized to generate the updated set of queries for the server. Both missing queries and deleted queries that may belong to the server based on an assignment function are inserted into a queue, which is later delivered to the cache of the server. The transfer may occur during a low-activity or idle state.

Serving cached query results based on a query portion

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Yinzhe Yu