Mining query subtopics from search log data

Most queries in web search are ambiguous and multifaceted. Identifying the major senses and facets of queries from search log data, referred to as query subtopic mining in this paper, is a very important issue in web search. Through search log analysis, we show that there are two interesting phenomena of user behavior that can be leveraged to identify query subtopics, referred to as ‘one subtopic per search’ and ‘subtopic clarification by keyword’. One subtopic per search means that if a user clicks multiple URLs in one query, then the clicked URLs tend to represent the same sense or facet. Subtopic clarification by keyword means that users often add an additional keyword or keywords to expand the query in order to clarify their search intent. Thus, the keywords tend to be indicative of the sense or facet. We propose a clustering algorithm that can effectively leverage the two phenomena to automatically mine the major subtopics of queries, where each subtopic is represented...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: SIGIR
• Authors: Yunhua Hu, Ya-nan Qian, Hang Li, Daxin Jiang, Jian Pei, Qinghua Zheng
• Keywords: Art Methods, Clustering Algorithm, Information Technology, Search Log, SIGIR 2012