Time-based language models

We explore the relationship between time and relevance using TREC ad-hoc queries. A type of query is identified that favors very recent documents. We propose a time-based language model approach to retrieval for these queries. We show how time can be incorporated into both query-likelihood models and relevance models. We carried out experiments to compare time-based language models to heuristic techniques for incorporating document recency in the ranking. Our results show that timebased models perform as well as or better than the best of the heuristic techniques. KEYWORDS Information retrieval, language models, relevance models, timebased language models, recency queries

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: CIKM
• Authors: Xiaoyan Li, W. Bruce Croft
• Keywords: CIKM 2003, Language Models, Relevance Models, Time-based Language Models