Time-aware query suggestion diversification for temporally ambiguous queries

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to generate diversified results for temporally ambiguous queries and the candidate queries are ensured to have a high coverage of subtopics, which are derived from different temporal periods.

Design/methodology/approach

Two novel time-aware query suggestion diversification models are developed by integrating semantics and temporality information involved in queries into two state-of-the-art explicit diversification algorithms (i.e. IA-select and xQuaD), respectively, and then specifying the components on which these two models rely on. Most importantly, first explored is how to explicitly determine query subtopics for each unique query from the query log or clicked documents and then modeling the subtopics into query suggestion diversification. The discussion on how to mine temporal intent behind a query from query log is also followed. Finally, to verify the effectiveness of the proposal, experiments on a real-world query log are conducted.

Findings

Preliminary experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly outperform the existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of producing the candidate query suggestion for temporally ambiguous queries.

Originality/value

This study reports the first attempt to generate query suggestions indicating diverse interested time points to the temporally ambiguous (input) queries. The research will be useful in enhancing users’ search experience through helping them to formulate accurate queries for their search tasks. In addition, the approaches investigated in the paper are general enough to be used in many domains; that is, experimental information retrieval systems, Web search engines, document archives and digital libraries.

Citation

Zhang, X., Jiang, X. and Qin, J. (2020), "Time-aware query suggestion diversification for temporally ambiguous queries", The Electronic Library, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 725-744. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-12-2019-0296