An Empirical Study of Query Specificity

We analyse the statistical behavior of query-associated quantities in query-logs, namely, the sum and mean of IDF of query terms, otherwise known as query specificity and query mean specificity. We narrow down the possibilities for modeling their distributions to gamma, log-normal, or log-logistic, depending on query length and on whether the sum or the mean is considered. The results have applications in query performance prediction and artificial query generation.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ECIR
• Authors: Avi Arampatzis, Jaap Kamps
• Keywords: ECIR 2010, Information Technology, Query Mean Specificity, Query Specificity, Query Terms