Estimation of Search Intents from Query to Context Search Engine

Abstract

This paper estimates users’ search intents when using the context search engine (CSE) by analyzing submitted queries. Recently, due to the increase in the amount of information on the Web and the diversification of information needs, the gap between user’s information needs and a basic search function provided by existing web search engines becomes larger. As a solution to this problem, the CSE that limits its tasks to answer questions about temporal trends has been proposed. It provides three primitive search functions, which users can use in accordance with their purposes. Furthermore, if the system can estimate users’ search intents, it can provide more user-friendly services that contribute the improvement of search efficiency. Aiming at estimating users’ search intents only from submitted queries, this paper analyzes the characteristics of queries in terms of typical search intents when using CSE, and defines classification rules. To show the potential use of the estimated search intents, this paper introduces a learning to rank into CSE. Experimental results show that MAP (mean average precision) is improved by learning rank models separately for different search intents.