EVALUATING SEMANTIC INTERPRETATIONS OF A SEARCH QUERY

• US 20160078131A1
• Filed: 03/11/2015
• Published: 03/17/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Uszkoreit, Jakob D., Venugopal, Ashish, Anderson, Edward Everett, Blitzer, John
• Granted Patent: US 10,353,964 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

The present disclosure relates to evaluating different semantic interpretations of a search query. One example method includes obtaining a set of search results for a particular search query submitted to a search engine; obtaining a set of semantic interpretations for the particular search query; obtaining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a canonical search query; generating a modified search query based at least in part on the particular search query and the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation; obtaining a set of search results for the modified search query for the semantic interpretation; and determining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a degree of similarity between (i) the set of search results of the modified search query for the semantic interpretation, and (ii) the set of search results for the particular search query.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method executed by one or more processors, the method comprising:

obtaining a set of search results for a particular search query submitted to a search engine;

obtaining a set of semantic interpretations for the particular search query, each semantic interpretation representing a candidate intent associated with the particular search query;

obtaining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a canonical search query;

generating, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a modified search query based at least in part on the particular search query and the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation;

obtaining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a set of search results for the modified search query for the semantic interpretation; and

determining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a degree of similarity between (i) the set of search results of the modified search query for the semantic interpretation, and (ii) the set of search results for the particular search query.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the modified search query for each semantic interpretation includes reformatting the particular search query to match the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the modified search query for each semantic interpretation includes replacing a substring included in the particular search query identifying a particular entity with an alternate substring identifying the particular entity included in the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on the size of an intersection between the set of search results for the modified search query and the set of search results for the particular search query.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on the size of a difference between the set of search results for the modified search query and the set of search results for the particular search query.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on the frequency of occurrence of particular keywords associated with the particular search query in the set of search results for the modified search query and the set of search results for the particular search query.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on comparing an order of the set of search results for the modified search query with an order of the set of search results for the particular search query.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising selecting a particular semantic interpretation based on the degrees of similarity.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on comparing attributes of the set of search results for the modified search query with attributes of the set of search results for the particular search query, wherein the attributes include at least one of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), terms included in the results, keywords, metadata, or click data.

10. A non-transitory, computer-readable medium storing instructions operable when executed to cause at least one processor to perform operations comprising:

obtaining a set of search results for a particular search query submitted to a search engine;

obtaining a set of semantic interpretations for the particular search query, each semantic interpretation representing a candidate intent associated with the particular search query;

obtaining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a canonical search query;

generating, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a modified search query based at least in part on the particular search query and the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation;

obtaining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a set of search results for the modified search query for the semantic interpretation; and

determining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a degree of similarity between (i) the set of search results of the modified search query for the semantic interpretation, and (ii) the set of search results for the particular search query.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein generating the modified search query for each semantic interpretation includes reformatting the particular search query to match the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein generating the modified search query for each semantic interpretation includes replacing a substring included in the particular search query identifying a particular entity with an alternate substring identifying the particular entity included in the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on the size of an intersection between the set of search results for the modified search query and the set of search results for the particular search query.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on the size of a difference between the set of search results for the modified search query and the set of search results for the particular search query.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on the frequency of occurrence of particular keywords associated with the particular search query in the set of search results for the modified search query and the set of search results for the particular search query.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein determining the degree of similarity is based at least in part on comparing an order of the set of search results for the modified search query with an order of the set of search results for the particular search query.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, the operations further comprising selecting a particular semantic interpretation based on the degrees of similarity.

18. A system comprising:

memory for storing data; and

one or more processors operable to perform operations comprising;

obtaining a set of search results for a particular search query submitted to a search engine;

obtaining a set of semantic interpretations for the particular search query, each semantic interpretation representing a candidate intent associated with the particular search query;

obtaining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a canonical search query;

generating, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a modified search query based at least in part on the particular search query and the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation;

obtaining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a set of search results for the modified search query for the semantic interpretation; and

determining, for each semantic interpretation of the set, a degree of similarity between (i) the set of search results of the modified search query for the semantic interpretation, and (ii) the set of search results for the particular search query.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein generating the modified search query for each semantic interpretation includes reformatting the particular search query to match the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein generating the modified search query for each semantic interpretation includes replacing a substring included in the particular search query identifying a particular entity with an alternate substring identifying the particular entity included in the canonical search query for the semantic interpretation.