Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer-storage media for improving the freshness, or the apparent freshness, of search results are described. In an embodiment, the first portion of search results presented on a search results page are based on responsiveness to the search query and a second portion of results describe only recently published documents that are responsive to the search query. In an embodiment, a more recent version of the document, which is not directly used to determine responsiveness, is used to build the caption for a search result. Another way to make search results appear fresh is to include a publication time within the search result caption. In one embodiment, the publication time is generated by calculating a point in time between when a document is first added to a search index and the previous time the search engine visited the site where the document was found.

Abstract: Systems and methods for applying user behavior data to improve serach query result ranking are provided. Upon receiving an update file indicating that recent, significant user behavior data is available for a document associated with an inverted index, the update file is published periodically and frequently to an index server. After filtering out the relevant update information from the update file, the index server extracts identifiers of the documents having the associated user behavior data. The update file and the identifier of the documents are utilized to update an in-memory index containing representations of metadata indicative of the user behavior. The in-memory index is continuously updated and utilized to serve search query results in response to user search queries. Search query results from the in-memory index are ranked using the user behavior data prior to serving. Thus, results associated with recent, significant user-behavior metadata receive prominent placement on the search results page.