Abstract: In some implementations, an utterance that requests a voice call is received, the utterance is classified as spoken by a particular known user, in response to classifying the utterance as spoken by the particular known user, a recipient voice number to call is determined based on contacts for the particular known user, and the voice call to the recipient voice number is initiated.

Abstract: Systems and methods for ranking communities based on content are described. A method includes receiving a search query from a first user of a social network. The method further includes analyzing content within groups of the social network to identify one or more of the groups that have content related to the search query. Each group may include one or more posts received from one or more members of the group. The groups may be identified responsive to a content match between the search query and content of a statistical amount of members of the respected group. The method may further include ranking the identified groups for presentation of the identified groups in a ranked order on a client device in response to the search query, the ranked order of each group being based on a corresponding statistical amount of members that have posted content matching the search query.

Abstract: Systems and methods for ranking communities based on members are described. One of the methods includes receiving a search query. The search query is received from a first user of a social network. The method further includes determining communities associated with the social network. Each community includes one or more posts. The one or more posts in a community are received from one or more members of the community. The method includes examining reputations of the members of the communities that satisfy the content match and ranking the communities based on the examination of the reputations of the members for presentation of the communities in a ranked order on a client device in response to the search query.

Abstract: Techniques are described herein for leveraging information about a user to enable a personal assistant module to make various inferences about what actions that may be responsive to a user declaration. In various implementations, upon identifying a user declaration received at a computing device, a plurality of candidate responsive actions that can be initiated by the computing device in response to the user declaration may be identified. A single candidate responsive action may then be non-deterministically (e.g., randomly, stochastically) selected to be exclusively initiated on the computing device in response to the user declaration.

Abstract: The disclosed embodiments include computerized methods, systems, and devices, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for generating terms of a search query based on a user's spoken utterances, identifying multiple cross-platform messages based on the generated terms, and to generating, via a presentation device, a single interface that enables the user to interact with identified messages. Based on a spoken utterance, the disclosed embodiments may determine user-specified search terms and/or criteria, and based on the user-specified search terms and/or criteria, may obtain cross-platform message data that corresponds to the search query. The communications device may generate one or more interface elements that describe corresponding ones of the cross-platform messages, which may be presented within a unified graphical user interface or voice-user interface by a communications device.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for populating a contact entry of a user based on information obtained from one or more sources that are external to the contact entry. Some implementations are directed generally to analyzing text of a document associated with the user to identify contact information in the document. In some versions of those implementations, an affinity measure associated with the document may be determined that is indicative of an amount of interest of the user in the document and a contact entry may be populated with one or more aspects of the contact information based on the affinity measure satisfying a threshold.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for populating a contact entry of a user based on information obtained from one or more sources that are external to the contact entry. Some implementations are directed generally to analyzing text of a document associated with the user to identify contact information in the document. In some versions of those implementations, an affinity measure associated with the document may be determined that is indicative of an amount of interest of the user in the document and a contact entry may be populated with one or more aspects of the contact information based on the affinity measure satisfying a threshold.

Abstract: Systems and methods for ranking communities based on content are described. One of the methods includes receiving a search query. The search query is received from a first user of a social network. The method includes examining content within communities to determine whether one or more of the communities satisfy the search query. Each community is associated with the social network and includes one or more posts. The method further includes ranking the communities based on the examination of the content for presentation of the communities in a ranked order on a client device in response to the search query. The ranked order includes an arrangement of one or more of the communities with more content related to the search query in an elevated prominence compared to one or more of the communities having less content related to the search query.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for populating a contact entry of a user based on information obtained from one or more sources that are external to the contact entry. Some implementations are directed generally to analyzing text of a document associated with the user to identify contact information in the document. In some versions of those implementations, an affinity measure associated with the document may be determined that is indicative of an amount of interest of the user in the document and a contact entry may be populated with one or more aspects of the contact information based on the affinity measure satisfying a threshold.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for presenting search results. One of the methods includes obtaining, based on a search request, search results that comprise a first user profile and a second user profile. The method includes determining a popularity difference between a first popularity associated with the first user profile and a second popularity associated with the second user profile. The method includes determining that the popularity difference exceeds a threshold. The method includes based on determining that the popularity difference exceeds the threshold, causing the search results to be presented in a display area such that the first user profile is emphasized relative to the second user profile within the display area.

Abstract: Key terms for similar passages from a large corpus are identified and used to enhance searching and browsing the corpus. The corpus contains multiple documents such as the text of books. Browsing by concept is supported by identifying a set of similar passages or quotations in documents stored in the corpus and assigning key terms to passages which links conceptually related passages together. The context of each passage instance is identified and can include, for example, the text surrounding the passage. The contexts of all similar passage instances are analyzed in order to identify key terms for the similar passage. The related key terms are analyzed to identify relationships among the key terms from different similar passage sets. The key terms can be used as a basis for navigating the documents in the corpus. The key terms enable browsing the documents in the corpus by concepts referenced in the documents.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for populating a contact entry of a user based on information obtained from one or more sources that are external to the contact entry. Some implementations are directed generally to analyzing text of a document associated with the user to identify contact information in the document. In some versions of those implementations, an affinity measure associated with the document may be determined that is indicative of an amount of interest of the user in the document and a contact entry may be populated with one or more aspects of the contact information based on the affinity measure satisfying a threshold.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for populating a contact entry of a user based on information obtained from one or more sources that are external to the contact entry. Some implementations are directed generally to analyzing text of a document associated with the user to identify contact information in the document. In some versions of those implementations, an affinity measure associated with the document may be determined that is indicative of an amount of interest of the user in the document and a contact entry may be populated with one or more aspects of the contact information based on the affinity measure satisfying a threshold.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for presenting search results. One of the methods includes obtaining, based on a search request, search results that comprise a first user profile and a second user profile. The method includes determining a popularity difference between a first popularity associated with the first user profile and a second popularity associated with the second user profile. The method includes determining that the popularity difference exceeds a threshold. The method includes based on determining that the popularity difference exceeds the threshold, causing the search results to be presented in a display area such that the first user profile is emphasized relative to the second user profile within the display area.

Abstract: A computer device may receive a search query from a user of a user device, determine that the search query is a people-related question, and identify, using a data structure, a set of people related to the search query, where the data structure is associated with the user, and where the data structure stores people-related data for a group of people with which the user is associated. The computer device may also determine whether to provide information relating to the set of people, and selectively provide, to the user device, one of a first document or a second document. The first document identifies at least one person in the set of people and provides information relating to the at least one person, where the information, relating to the at least one person, provides an answer to the people-related question. The second document excludes information relating to the set of people.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for ranking resources within clusters of resources, and for ranking the clusters. In one aspect, a method includes accessing a cluster of a plurality of resources associated with a name context; generating a quality score for a resource; generating a resource ranking score for the resource, with the resource ranking score at least partly based on the quality score and the cluster relation score; and ranking the resources in the cluster at least partly based on the resource ranking score.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for ranking resources within clusters of resources, and for ranking the clusters. In one aspect, a method includes accessing clusters; receiving, for a resource in the cluster, a search score for the resource, the search score being indicative of a relevance of the resource to a search query that includes the name context of the cluster; receiving, for the resource in the cluster, a resource ranking score for the resource in the cluster, the resource ranking score indicative of a ranking of the resource in the cluster relative to other resources in the cluster; generating a cluster rank score for the cluster, the cluster rank score at least partly based on the search scores for the resources and the resource ranking scores for the resources; and ranking the clusters according to their cluster rank score.

Abstract: A corpus contains digital text from multiple documents. A passage mining engine identifies similar passages in the documents and stores data describing the similarities. The passage mining engine groups similar passages into groups based on degree of similarity or other criteria. The passage mining engine ranks the similar passages found in the text corpus based on quality or other criteria. A user interface is presented that includes hypertext links associated with the similar passages that allow a user to navigate the documents.

Abstract: Key terms for similar passages from a large corpus are identified and used to enhance searching and browsing the corpus. The corpus contains multiple documents such as the text of books. Browsing by concept is supported by identifying a set of similar passages or quotations in documents stored in the corpus and assigning key terms to passages which links conceptually related passages together. The context of each passage instance is identified and can include, for example, the text surrounding the passage. The contexts of all similar passage instances are analyzed in order to identify key terms for the similar passage. The related key terms are analyzed to identify relationships among the key terms from different similar passage sets. The key terms can be used as a basis for navigating the documents in the corpus. The key terms enable browsing the documents in the corpus by concepts referenced in the documents.

Abstract: Passages in a digital corpus are scored and ranked based at least in part on characteristics of instances of the passages occurring in the corpus. Such characteristics include the popularity of the author, the characteristics of the words introducing and following the similar passage, frequency of appearance of the passage in the digital corpus, the length of the similar passage, the words of the similar passage, the usage of punctuation with the similar passage, and the diffusion of the similar passage within the digital corpus. The characteristics are scored and weighted to produce ranking scores for the associated passages. The ranking scores are used for purposes including selecting passages to display in association with a document and ranking passages displayed in response to a search.