Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for linking to an intra-document portion of a target document includes receiving an address for a target document identified by a search engine in response to a query, the target document including query-relevant text that identifies an intra-document portion of the target document, the intra-document portion including the query relevant text. An artificial anchor is generated, the artificial anchor corresponding to the intra-document portion. The artificial anchor is appended the address.

Abstract: An information retrieval system includes a query revision architecture that integrates multiple different query revisers, each implementing one or more query revision strategies. A revision server receives a user's query, and interfaces with the various query revisers, each of which generates one or more potential revised queries. The revision server evaluates the potential revised queries, and selects one or more of them to provide to the user. A session-based reviser suggests one or more revised queries, given a first query, by calculating an expected utility for the revised query. The expected utility is calculated as the product of a frequency of occurrence of the query pair and an increase in quality of the revised query over the first query.

Abstract: An information retrieval system includes a query revision architecture that integrates multiple different query revisers, each implementing one or more query revision strategies. A revision server receives a user's query, and interfaces with the various query revisers, each of which generates one or more potential revised queries. The revision server evaluates the potential revised queries, and selects one or more of them to provide to the user.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method of seeking answers to questions comprises receiving one or more questions from users seeking answers, maintaining an inventory of pending questions to be answered, and transmitting a question from the pending question inventory to a network location determined to be topically relevant to the transmitted question based on the content of the network location.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus determine equivalent descriptions for an information need. In one implementation, if adjacent entries in a query log contain common terms, the uncommon terms are identified as a candidate pair. The candidate pairs are assigned a score based on their frequency of occurrence, and pairs having a score exceeding a defined threshold are determined to be synonyms.

Abstract: A server improves the ranking of search results. The server includes a processor and a memory that stores instructions and a group of query themes. The processor receives a search query containing at least one search term, retrieves one or more objects based on the at least one search term and determines whether the search query corresponds to at least one of the group of query themes. The processor then ranks the one or more objects based on whether the search query corresponds to at least one of the group of query themes and provides the ranked one or more objects to a user.

Abstract: Techniques for crawling hyperlinked documents are provided. Hyperlinked documents to be crawled are grouped by host and the host to be crawled next is selected according to a stall time of the host. The stall time can indicate the earliest time that the host should be crawled and the stall times can be a predetermined amount of time, vary by host and be adjusted according to actual retrieval times from the host.

Abstract: A method of presenting computer-generated search result information can include receiving a search request from a client computer; identifying a plurality of search results responsive to the search request; ranking the plurality of search results using content in one or more web notebooks; and providing the ranked plurality of search results for presentation in the client computer. Using the content can include determining whether at least one of a title, a heading, clipped content, metadata or a user-annotation in at least one web notebook relates to the search request and, if so, increasing a ranking of at least one search result referenced by the at least one web notebook.

Abstract: A method of adding web-based content to a web notebook can include producing multiple search results responsive to a search request; generating in the multiple search results multiple corresponding icons, each of which, when invoked, causes content associated with a corresponding search result in the multiple search results to be placed in a web notebook associated with a user account; and forming a correlation between one of the multiple search results and the web notebook.

Abstract: The disclosed embodiments enable multi-stage query scoring, including “snippet” generation, through incremental document reconstruction facilitated by a multi-tiered mapping scheme. The mapping scheme includes a first mapping between unique tokens contained in a set of documents and unique global token identifiers (e.g., 32-bit integers) contained in a global-lexicon (i.e., dictionary). The mapping scheme also includes a second mapping between the global token identifiers and a set of fixed-length local token identifiers (e.g., 8-bit integers) contained in one or more mini-lexicons (i.e., sub-dictionaries). Each mini-lexicon is associated with a range of token positions in the tokenized documents. The first and second mappings are used to encode/decode documents into local token identifiers having fixed widths which can be compactly stored in the tokenspace repository. The use of fixed-length local token identifiers allows for fast and efficient decoding of tokenized documents.

Abstract: A method includes generating search results in response to a user query, where at least one of the search results includes a group of links. The group of links may represent links to web pages within a same web site and may be identified based on at least one factor associated with the links. The method may also include providing the search results to the user.

Abstract: An information retrieval system includes a query revision architecture that integrates multiple different query revisers, each implementing one or more query revision strategies. A revision server receives a user's query, and interfaces with the various query revisers, each of which generates one or more potential revised queries. The revision server evaluates the potential revised queries, and selects one or more of them to provide to the user. A confidence estimator and method provide the ability to improve the likelihood of success of suggested revised queries derived from various revision strategies. This is accomplished by tracking user queries, query revision links, results associated with revised queries, and various features of the original query and revised queries. This data is then analyzed using a predictive model to generate a set of rules that can be used to estimate the likelihood of a revised query being a successful revision for a given query.

Abstract: An information retrieval system includes a query revision architecture that integrates multiple different query revisers, each implementing one or more query revision strategies. A revision server receives a user's query, and interfaces with the various query revisers, each of which generates one or more potential revised queries. The revision server evaluates the potential revised queries, and selects one or more of them to provide to the user.

Abstract: An information retrieval system includes a query revision architecture that integrates multiple different query revisers, each implementing one or more query revision strategies. A revision server receives a user's query, and interfaces with the various query revisers, each of which generates one or more potential revised queries. The revision server evaluates the potential revised queries, and selects one or more of them to provide to the user. A session-based reviser suggests one or more revised queries, given a first query, by calculating an expected utility for the revised query. The expected utility is calculated as the product of a frequency of occurrence of the query pair and an increase in quality of the revised query over the first query.

Abstract: A server improves the ranking of search results. The server includes a processor and a memory that stores instructions and a group of query themes. The processor receives a search query containing at least one search term, retrieves one or more objects based on the at least one search term and determines whether the search query corresponds to at least one of the group of query themes. The processor then ranks the one or more objects based on whether the search query corresponds to at least one of the group of query themes and provides the ranked one or more objects to a user.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus determine equivalent descriptions for an information need. In one implementation, if adjacent entries in a query log contain common terms, the uncommon terms are identified as a candidate pair. The candidate pairs are assigned a score based on their frequency of occurrence, and pairs having a score exceeding a defined threshold are determined to be synonyms.

Abstract: Systems and methods for direct navigation to and/or highlighting a specific portion of a target document such as query-relevant portion of the document are disclosed. The method may include generating a search result link to a search result document and generating an instruction to a client document browser to navigate directly to an intra-document portion related to the query within the search result document. The search result may include a snippet extracted from the search result document such that the instruction causes navigation directly to at least a portion of the snippet. The instruction may be an artificial anchor undefined in the search result document, e.g., designated by a preassigned artificial anchor designator. The client browser may have an artificial anchor module installed to execute the instruction to navigate directly to and optionally highlight the intra-document portion within the target document in response to the document link being selected.

Abstract: A system and method for providing a user interface with search query broadening is described. A query defining a search executable on potentially retrievable information is accepted. The query is parsed. A broadened query is provided. At least one of the broadened query and results of a search executed on the broadened query is presented.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for locking an object using an efficient combination spinning and blocking process are disclosed. According to one aspect of the present invention, a method for acquiring ownership of an object in an object-based environment using a current thread includes determining when the object is owned by another thread, and locking the object when it is determined that the object is not owned by the another thread. A first spinning process, which is implemented when it is determined that the object is owned by the another thread, is arranged such that the current thread spins for up to a predetermined number of spin cycles associated with the current thread and the object. The predetermined number of spin cycles is determined using historical information, and is not based upon an overall system specification. When it is determined that the object has not been locked by the current thread during the first spinning process, a first blocking process is implemented.

Abstract: An improved duplicate detection technique that uses query-relevant information to limit the portion(s) of documents to be compared for similarity is described. Before comparing two documents for similarity, the content of these documents may be condensed based on the query. In one embodiment, query-relevant information or text (also referred to as “snippets”) is extracted from the documents and only the extracted snippets, rather than the entire documents, are compared for purposes of determining similarity.