Abstract: Techniques for inferring social affinity may include the following operations: obtaining information derived from online activity of a first party, where the online activity includes searches initiated by the first party, and where the information specifies interaction of the first party with content accessed through the online activity; determining, based on the information, that an amount of the interaction of the first party with the content exceeds a threshold; following the determining, identifying a second party who provided the content; adjusting, in a social graph for the first party, an affinity of the second party to the first party based on the amount of the interaction with the content; and using the affinity to promote search results output to the first party that contain content that is provided by the second party.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving a query initial input from a user, in response to receiving the query initial input, determining a set of personalized query suggestions based on the query initial input, the set of personalized query suggestions including one or more content-based query suggestions that reflect at least one of user data associated with the user within one or more computer-implemented services and use of the one or more computer-implemented services by the user, and transmitting instructions to display the set of personalized query suggestions to the user.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that considers lexical synonyms for terms while processing a query. During operation, the system receives a query containing one or more terms. Next, the system identifies one or more lexical synonyms for the one or more terms. The system then generates an altered query using the one or more lexical synonyms and processes the altered query to produce search results.

Abstract: Techniques include: identifying one or more first entities who have connections to more than a threshold number of other entities; identifying first content in the search index that is authored by the first entities; and associating author restricts with the first content, where the author restricts include data identifying entities who authored corresponding content. The techniques may also include: identifying one or more second entities who have social connections to one or more entities who authored second content, where the one or more second entities have connections to less than the threshold number other entities; associating searcher restricts with the second content; and providing the search index updated with searcher and author restricts.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for social identity clustering. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a connection graph representing public social data, where the nodes represent social identities and each edge is either a “me” edge between identities claimed to belong to the same person or a “friend” edge between identities claimed to belong to different identities. The method further includes converting the graph to a cluster graph in which each node initially corresponds to a single node of the connection graph. The method further includes updating the cluster graph by iteratively merging cluster nodes based on an analysis of the weight of the “me” edges connecting them, and then replacing the merged cluster nodes within the graph with a new cluster node containing the merged cluster nodes, where the edges of the new cluster node are the aggregated edges of the merged cluster nodes.

Abstract: Implementations of the present disclosure include actions of receiving search results that are responsive to the search query, the search results being respectively representative of resources, processing one or more triggering rules based on at least one of the search query and the search results, determining, based on processing the one or more triggering rules, that a set of data records is to be displayed in a search results page with the search results, the set of data records including data records that are specific to the user, determining a display prominence of at least one data record in the set of data records, the display prominence indicating a prominence of the at least one data record when displayed in the search results page, and providing the search results and the set of data records for display, the at least one data record being displayed based on the display prominence.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving a search query from a user, accessing a user model that is specific to the user and that includes one or more n-grams, one or more terms of the n-grams being associated with one or more annotations, the annotations indicating at least one context in which each of the one or more terms have been used, determining a user intent for the search query based on comparing one or more terms in the search query with the terms of n-grams in the user model, and receiving search results that are responsive to the search query, the search results being specific to the user intent.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving a search query from a user, accessing a user model that is specific to the user and that includes one or more n-grams, one or more terms of the n-grams being associated with one or more annotations, the annotations indicating at least one context in which each of the one or more terms have been used, annotating one or more terms in the search query to provide an annotated search query, annotations being provided from user model, and receiving search results that are responsive to the annotated search query.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving a plurality of documents, the plurality of documents being associated with a user of a plurality of users and having been generated using a plurality of computer-implemented services, determining information from the plurality of documents that is of potential interest to the user, and providing a user model that is specific to the user and that includes one or more n-grams, one or more terms of the n-grams being associated with one or more annotations, the annotations indicating at least one context in which each of the one or more terms have been used, wherein the at least one context is based on information determined from the document

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for cross-language information retrieval. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of receiving a query in a source language, the query including one or more query terms; automatically determining one or more target languages relevant to the query; translating the query into one or more translated queries in the respective one or more target languages; determining search results responsive to the respective one or more translated queries; and providing one or more of the search results.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving a query initial input from a user, in response to receiving the query initial input, determining a set of personalized query suggestions based on the query initial input, the set of personalized query suggestions including one or more content-based query suggestions that reflect at least one of user data associated with the user within one or more computer-implemented services and use of the one or more computer-implemented services by the user, and transmitting instructions to display the set of personalized query suggestions to the user.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for cross-language information retrieval. A source query in a source language is received. The source query is translated into a target query in a target language. One or more target-language resources that satisfy the target query are identified. The identified resources are translated into the source language. Search results corresponding to the translated resources are presented.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that automatically identifies compounds, such as bigrams or n-grams. During operation, the system obtains selections of search results which were selected by one or more users, wherein the search results were previously generated by a search engine in response to queries containing search terms. Next, the system forms a set of candidate compounds from the queries, wherein each candidate compound comprises n consecutive terms from a query. Then, for each candidate compound in the set, the system analyzes the selections of search results to calculate a likelihood that the candidate compound is a compound.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for cross-language information retrieval. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of identifying a structured collection of documents, the collection of documents being organized according to a hierarchy of categories; extracting entities from structured collection of document; assigning language scores to each document in the collection of documents; assigning language scores to entities based on scores of associated documents of the collection of documents; and generating a mapping between entities and language scores.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for social identity clustering. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a connection graph representing public social data, where the nodes represent social identities and each edge is either a “me” edge between identities claimed to belong to the same person or a “friend” edge between identities claimed to belong to different identities. The method further includes converting the graph to a cluster graph in which each node initially corresponds to a single node of the connection graph. The method further includes updating the cluster graph by iteratively merging cluster nodes based on an analysis of the weight of the “me” edges connecting them, and then replacing the merged cluster nodes within the graph with a new cluster node containing the merged cluster nodes, where the edges of the new cluster node are the aggregated edges of the merged cluster nodes.

Abstract: This specification describes technologies relating to searching. In general, aspects of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of receiving a search query from a user of a search service, identifying search results including general search results responsive to the search query and social search results associated with content generated by one or more members of a user social graph associated with the user that are responsive to the search query, the search results corresponding to digital content stored in one or more computer-readable storage media, determining that a first social search result is associated with a first muted member that is a member of the user social graph, generating filtered search results in response to determining that the social search result is associated with the first muted member, and providing the filtered search results for display to the user.

Abstract: This specification describes technologies relating to searching. In general, aspects of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of receiving a search query from a user of a search service, identifying search results including general search results responsive to the search query and social search results associated with content generated by one or more members of a user social graph associated with the user that are responsive to the search query, the search results corresponding to digital content stored in one or more computer-readable storage media, determining that a first social search result is associated with a first muted member that is a member of the user social graph, generating filtered search results in response to determining that the social search result is associated with the first muted member, and providing the filtered search results for display to the user.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that automatically identifies compounds, such as bigrams or n-grams. During operation, the system obtains selections of search results which were selected by one or more users, wherein the search results were previously generated by a search engine in response to queries containing search terms. Next, the system forms a set of candidate compounds from the queries, wherein each candidate compound comprises n consecutive terms from a query. Then, for each candidate compound in the set, the system analyzes the selections of search results to calculate a likelihood that the candidate compound is a compound.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, in which a cross-language search can be performed. A search query is received in a first language. A translated search query of the search query is obtained and evaluated to determine whether it is a candidate for cross-language searching. Upon identifying a candidate, a search can be performed using the translated search query to generate search results relevant to the translated search query.

Abstract: A geographic relevance component determines geographic relevance of web resources based on an analysis of data points that correspond to estimated physical locations of the IP addresses of a number of visitors to the web site. The geographic relevance component may additionally determine the probability that a particular user is within the geographical relevance corresponding to a web resource.