False negative prediction for training a machine-learning model

Abstract

An online system updates the labels on negative examples to account for the possibility that the example is a false negative. The system generates a set of initial training examples that each include a query input by the user and item data for an item presented as a result to the user's query. Each training example also includes an initial label, which represents whether the user interacted with the item presented as a search result. The online system updates the initial label for a negative training example by identifying a set of bridge queries and computing a similarity score between the query for the training example and the bridge queries. The online system computes an updated label for the negative example based on the similarity scores and updates the training example with the updated label.