基于用户行为的长查询用户满意度分析

搜索引擎性能评估是信息检索界一个重要课题.长查询具有较为丰富的信息内容,能更加准确地描述用户的信息需求.在此基础上文中提出长查询用户满意度分析的整体框架,定义用户满意度的概念,并在用户日志中提取相关用户行为特征,应用决策树和SVM两种分类算法评测用户满意度.在大规模商业搜索引擎日志上完成的实验结果证明了这套评价体系的有效性.结果表明,用户对于查询满意和不满意的分类准确率分别达到86％和70％.     

QUBiC: An adaptive approach to query-based recommendation

Search engine users often encounter the difficulty of phrasing the precise query that could lead to satisfactory search results. Query recommendation is considered an effective assistant in enhancing keyword-based queries in search engines and Web search software. In this paper, we present a Query-URL Bipartite based query reCommendation approach, called QUBiC. It utilizes the connectivity of a query-URL bipartite graph to recommend related queries and can significantly improve the accuracy and effectiveness of personalized query recommendation systems comparing with the conventional pairwise similarity based approach. The main contribution of the QUBiC approach is its three-phase framework for personalized query recommendations. The first phase is the preparation of queries and their search results returned by a search engine, which generates a historical query-URL bipartite collection. The second phase is the discovery of similar queries by extracting a query affinity graph from the bipartite graph, instead of operating on the original bipartite graph directly using biclique-based approach or graph clustering. The query affinity graph consists of only queries as its vertices and its edges are weighted according to a query-URL vector based similarity (dissimilarity) measure. The third phase is the ranking of similar queries. We devise a novel rank mechanism for ordering the related queries based on the merging distances of a hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC). By utilizing the query affinity graph and the HAC-based ranking, we are able to capture the propagation of similarity from query to query by inducing an implicit topical relatedness between queries. Furthermore, the flexibility of the HAC strategy makes it possible for users to interactively participate in the query recommendation process, and helps to bridge the gap between the determinacy of actual similarity values and the indeterminacy of users’ information needs, allowing the lists of related queries to be changed from user to user and query to query, thus adaptively recommending related queries on demand. Our experimental evaluation results show that the QUBiC approach is highly efficient and more effective compared to the conventional query recommendation systems, yielding about 13.3 % as the most improvement in terms of precision.     

Predicting user click behaviour in search engine advertisements

According to the specific requirements and interests of users, search engines select and display advertisements that match user needs and have higher probability of attracting users’ attention based on their previous search history. New objects such as user, advertisement or query cause a deterioration of precision in targeted advertising due to their lack of history. This article surveys this challenge. In the case of new objects, we first extract similar observed objects to the new object and then we use their history as the history of new object. Similarity between objects is measured based on correlation, which is a relation between user and advertisement when the advertisement is displayed to the user. This method is used for all objects, so it has helped us to accurately select relevant advertisements for users’ queries. In our proposed model, we assume that similar users behave in a similar manner. We find that users with few queries are similar to new users. We will show that correlation between users and advertisements’ keywords is high. Thus, users who pay attention to advertisements’ keywords, click similar advertisements. In addition, users who pay attention to specific brand names might have similar behaviours too.     

A personalized query expansion approach for engineering document retrieval

Engineers create engineering documents with their own terminologies, and want to search existing engineering documents quickly and accurately during a product development process. Keyword-based search methods have been widely used due to their ease of use, but their search accuracy has been often problematic because of the semantic ambiguity of terminologies in engineering documents and queries. The semantic ambiguity can be alleviated by using a domain ontology. Also, if queries are expanded to incorporate the engineer’s personalized information needs, the accuracy of the search result would be improved. Therefore, we propose a framework to search engineering documents with less semantic ambiguity and more focus on each engineer’s personalized information needs. The framework includes four processes: (1) developing a domain ontology, (2) indexing engineering documents, (3) learning user profiles, and (4) performing personalized query expansion and retrieval. A domain ontology is developed based on product structure information and engineering documents. Using the domain ontology, terminologies in documents are disambiguated and indexed. Also, a user profile is generated from the domain ontology. By user profile learning, user’s interests are captured from the relevant documents. During a personalized query expansion process, the learned user profile is used to reflect user’s interests. Simultaneously, user’s searching intent, which is implicitly inferred from the user’s task context, is also considered. To retrieve relevant documents, an expanded query in which both user’s interests and intents are reflected is then matched against the document collection. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can substantially outperform both the keyword-based approach and the existing query expansion method in retrieving engineering documents. Reflecting a user’s information needs precisely has been identified to be the most important factor underlying this notable improvement.     

Spatial inverse query processing

Traditional spatial queries return, for a given query object q, all database objects that satisfy a given predicate, such as epsilon range and k-nearest neighbors. This paper defines and studies inverse spatial queries, which, given a subset of database objects Q and a query predicate, return all objects which, if used as query objects with the predicate, contain Q in their result. We first show a straightforward solution for answering inverse spatial queries for any query predicate. Then, we propose a filter-and-refinement framework that can be used to improve efficiency. We show how to apply this framework on a variety of inverse queries, using appropriate space pruning strategies. In particular, we propose solutions for inverse epsilon range queries, inverse k-nearest neighbor queries, and inverse skyline queries. Furthermore, we show how to relax the definition of inverse queries in order to ensure non-empty result sets. Our experiments show that our framework is significantly more efficient than naive approaches.     

Continuous visible k nearest neighbor query on moving objects

A visible k nearest neighbor (Vk NN) query retrieves k objects that are visible and nearest to the query object, where “visible” means that there is no obstacle between an object and the query object. Existing studies on the Vk NN query have focused on static data objects. In this paper we investigate how to process the query on moving objects continuously. We propose an effective filtering-and-refinement framework for evaluating this type of queries. We exploit spatial proximity and visibility properties between the query object and data objects to prune search space under this framework. A detailed cost analysis and a comprehensive experimental study are conducted on the proposed framework. The results validate the effectiveness of the pruning techniques and verify the efficiency of the proposed framework. The proposed framework outperforms a straightforward solution by an order of magnitude in terms of both communication and computation costs.     

Pictorial Query Specification for Browsing Through Spatially Referenced Image Databases

A pictorial query specification technique that enables the formulation of complex pictorial queries for browsing through a collection of spatially referenced images is presented. It is distinguished from most other methods by the fact that in these methods the query image specifies a target database image in its entirety whereas in our approach the query image specifies the combination of objects that the target database image should contain rather than being treated as a whole image. The query objects are represented by shape features although other features such as color, texture or wavelets could also be used. Using our technique, it is possible to specify which particular objects should appear in the target images as well as how many occurrences of each object are required. Moreover, it is possible to specify the minimum required certainty of matching between query-image objects and database-image objects, as well as to impose spatial constraints that specify bounds on the distance between objects and the relative direction between them. These spatial constraints can also be used to specify other topological relations such as enclosure, intersection, overlap, etc. Each pictorial query is composed of one or more query images. Each query image is constructed by selecting the required query objects and positioning them according to the desired spatial configuration. Boolean combinations of two or more query images are also possible by use of AND and OR operators. A query image may be negated in order to specify conditions that should not be satisfied by the database images that are retrieved successfully. In addition, a capability is provided to specify whether the same instance of an object is to be used when it appears in more than one of the query images that make up the pictorial query, or whether two different instances are allowed. Several example queries are given that demonstrate the expressive power of this query specification method. An algorithm for retrieving all database images that conform to a given pictorial query specification is presented. The user interface for using this pictorial query specification method to browse the results in a map image database application is described and illustrated via screen shots.     

Optimizing Queries with Object Updates

Object-oriented databases (OODBs) provide powerful data abstractions and modeling facilities but they usually lack a suitable framework for query processing and optimization. Even though there is an increasing number of recent proposals on OODB query optimization, only few of them are actually focused on query optimization in the presence of object identity and destructive updates, features often supported by most realistic OODB languages. This paper presents a formal framework for optimizing object-oriented queries in the presence of side effects. These queries may contain object updates at any place and in any form. We present a language extension to the monoid comprehension calculus to express these object-oriented features and we give a formal meaning to these extensions. Our method is based on denotational semantics, which is often used to give a formal meaning to imperative programming languages. The semantics of our language extensions is expressed in terms of our monoid calculus, without the need of any fundamental change to our basic framework. Our method not only maintains referential transparency, which allows us to do meaningful query optimization, but it is also practical for optimizing OODB queries since it allows the same optimization techniques applied to regular queries to be used with minimal changes for OODB queries with updates.     

DART+: Direction-aware bichromatic reverse k nearest neighbor query processing in spatial databases

This article presents a novel type of queries in spatial databases, called the direction-aware bichromatic reverse k nearest neighbor(DBRkNN) queries, which extend the bichromatic reverse nearest neighbor queries. Given two disjoint sets, P and S, of spatial objects, and a query object q in S, the DBRkNN query returns a subset P′ of P such that k nearest neighbors of each object in P′ include q and each object in P′ has a direction toward q within a pre-defined distance. We formally define the DBRkNN query, and then propose an efficient algorithm, called DART, for processing the DBRkNN query. Our method utilizes a grid-based index to cluster the spatial objects, and the B⁺-tree to index the direction angle. We adopt a filter-refinement framework that is widely used in many algorithms for reverse nearest neighbor queries. In the filtering step, DART eliminates all the objects that are away from the query object more than a pre-defined distance, or have an invalid direction angle. In the refinement step, remaining objects are verified whether the query object is actually one of the k nearest neighbors of them. As a major extension of DART, we also present an improved algorithm, called DART+, for DBRkNN queries. From extensive experiments with several datasets, we show that DART outperforms an R-tree-based naive algorithm in both indexing time and query processing time. In addition, our extension algorithm, DART+, also shows significantly better performance than DART.     

Round-Eye: A system for tracking nearest surrounders in moving object environments

This paper presents “Round-Eye”, a system for tracking nearest surrounding objects (or nearest surrounders) in moving object environments. This system provides a platform for surveillance applications. The core part of this system is continuous nearest surrounder (NS) query that maintains views of the nearest objects at distinct angles from query points. This query differs from conventional spatial queries such as range queries and nearest neighbor queries as NS query considers both distance and angular aspects of objects with respect to a query point at the same time. In our system framework, a centralized server is dedicated (1) to collect location updates of both objects and queries, (2) to determine which NS queries are invalidated in presence of object/query location changes and corresponding result changes if any, and (3) to refresh the affected query answers. To enhance the system performance in terms of processing time and network bandwidth consumption, we propose various techniques, namely, safe region, partial query reevaluation, and incremental query result update. Through simulations, we evaluate our system with the proposed techniques over a wide range of settings.     

一种基于排序学习方法的查询扩展技术

查询扩展作为一门重要的信息检索技术,是以用户查询为基础,通过一定策略在原始查询中加入一些相关的扩展词,从而使得查询能够更加准确地描述用户信息需求。排序学习方法利用机器学习的知识构造排序模型对数据进行排序,是当前机器学习与信息检索交叉领域的研究热点。该文尝试利用伪相关反馈技术,在查询扩展中引入排序学习算法,从文档集合中提取与扩展词相关的特征,训练针对于扩展词的排序模型,并利用排序模型对新查询的扩展词集合进行重新排序,将排序后的扩展词根据排序得分赋予相应的权重,加入到原始查询中进行二次检索,从而提高信息检索的准确率。在TREC数据集合上的实验结果表明,引入排序学习算法有助于提高伪相关反馈的检索性能。     

SINA: Semantic interpretation of user queries for question answering on interlinked data

The architectural choices underlying Linked Data have led to a compendium of data sources which contain both duplicated and fragmented information on a large number of domains. One way to enable non-experts users to access this data compendium is to provide keyword search frameworks that can capitalize on the inherent characteristics of Linked Data. Developing such systems is challenging for three main reasons. First, resources across different datasets or even within the same dataset can be homonyms. Second, different datasets employ heterogeneous schemas and each one may only contain a part of the answer for a certain user query. Finally, constructing a federated formal query from keywords across different datasets requires exploiting links between the different datasets on both the schema and instance levels. We present Sina, a scalable keyword search system that can answer user queries by transforming user-supplied keywords or natural-languages queries into conjunctive SPARQL queries over a set of interlinked data sources. Sina uses a hidden Markov model to determine the most suitable resources for a user-supplied query from different datasets. Moreover, our framework is able to construct federated queries by using the disambiguated resources and leveraging the link structure underlying the datasets to query. We evaluate Sina over three different datasets. We can answer 25 queries from the QALD-1 correctly. Moreover, we perform as well as the best question answering system from the QALD-3 competition by answering 32 questions correctly while also being able to answer queries on distributed sources. We study the runtime of SINA in its mono-core and parallel implementations and draw preliminary conclusions on the scalability of keyword search on Linked Data.     

Automatic content based image retrieval using semantic analysis

We present a new text-to-image re-ranking approach for improving the relevancy rate in searches. In particular, we focus on the fundamental semantic gap that exists between the low-level visual features of the image and high-level textual queries by dynamically maintaining a connected hierarchy in the form of a concept database. For each textual query, we take the results from popular search engines as an initial retrieval, followed by a semantic analysis to map the textual query to higher level concepts. In order to do this, we design a two-layer scoring system which can identify the relationship between the query and the concepts automatically. We then calculate the image feature vectors and compare them with the classifier for each related concept. An image is relevant only when it is related to the query both semantically and content-wise. The second feature of this work is that we loosen the requirement for query accuracy from the user, which makes it possible to perform well on users’ queries containing less relevant information. Thirdly, the concept database can be dynamically maintained to satisfy the variations in user queries, which eliminates the need for human labor in building a sophisticated initial concept database. We designed our experiment using complex queries (based on five scenarios) to demonstrate how our retrieval results are a significant improvement over those obtained from current state-of-the-art image search engines.     

时间区间上的不确定移动对象距离范围查询

针对目标对象与查询发出者皆为不确定移动对象的情况,提出了一种时间区间上的距离范围查询（DRqTI）.此类查询搜索出数据集中在给定时间区间内,到查询发出者距离不超过阈值的目标对象,查询结果中包含对象满足查询条件的有效时间段和匹配度.提出了基于轨迹、基于时间区间和基于距离的三种剪枝策略,并给出了精炼和匹配度计算方法,在此基础上设计了查询处理算法.实验分析表明,三种剪枝策略中基于距离的方法性能最佳,提出的算法能有效处理DRqTI问题.     

A knowledge-based approach for retrieving images by content

A knowledge based approach is introduced for retrieving images by content. It supports the answering of conceptual image queries involving similar-to predicates, spatial semantic operators, and references to conceptual terms. Interested objects in the images are represented by contours segmented from images. Image content such as shapes and spatial relationships are derived from object contours according to domain specific image knowledge. A three layered model is proposed for integrating image representations, extracted image features, and image semantics. With such a model, images can be retrieved based on the features and content specified in the queries. The knowledge based query processing is based on a query relaxation technique. The image features are classified by an automatic clustering algorithm and represented by Type Abstraction Hierarchies (TAHs) for knowledge based query processing. Since the features selected for TAH generation are based on context and user profile, and the TAHs can be generated automatically by a clustering algorithm from the feature database, our proposed image retrieval approach is scalable and context sensitive. The performance of the proposed knowledge based query processing is also discussed     

Evaluating refined queries in top-k retrieval systems

In many applications, users specify target values for certain attributes/features without requiring exact matches to these values in return. Instead, the result is typically a ranked list of "top k" objects that best match the specified feature values. User subjectivity is an important aspect of such queries, i.e., which objects are relevant to the user and which are not depends on the perception of the user. Due to the subjective nature of top-k queries, the answers returned by the system to an user query often do not satisfy the users need right away, either because the weights and the distance functions associated with the features do not accurately capture the users perception or because the specified target values do not fully capture her information need or both. In such cases, the user would like to refine the query and resubmit it in order to get back a better set of answers. While there has been a lot of research on query refinement models, there is no work that we are aware of on supporting refinement of top-k queries efficiently in a database system. Done naively, each "refined" query can be treated as a "starting" query and evaluated from scratch. We explore alternative approaches that significantly improve the cost of evaluating refined queries by exploiting the observation that the refined queries are not modified drastically from one iteration to another. Our experiments over a real-life multimedia data set show that the proposed techniques save more than 80 percent of the execution cost of refined queries over the naive approach and is more than an order of magnitude faster than a simple sequential scan.     

基于概念模型的个性化搜索引擎研究

在对用户兴趣模型探讨的基础上,提出了一种基于概念的用户兴趣模型,用于区别用户兴趣的大小.讨论了基于链接的查询聚类算法,并针对该算法的不足提出了一种基于概念的聚类算法,该算法根据用户兴趣模型建立查询-概念二分图,然后计算图中查询顶点间的概念相似度,并将概念相似度最高的查询顶点进行合并以实现聚类.设计实现了一个基于Web数据挖掘的个性化搜索引擎系统,对系统的个性化查询进行了测试,并对比分析了链接聚类和概念聚类的实验结果.     

Spatial targeting using queries in a 3-D GIS environment with application to mineral exploration

A query framework for spatial targeting within a 3-D geographic information system (GIS) software environment is introduced. Input to a query consists of parameters relevant to the query type together with a set of Common Earth Modelling objects represented as point sets, polygonal lines, surfaces, and grids or a region set (subset) thereof. The result of a 3-D GIS query is a region within each of the input objects that consists of nodes or grid cells where the query criteria was satisfied. We provide example scenarios, drawn from mineral exploration, where 3-D queries are used to guide spatial targeting within a near-mine or regional map scale setting. Query types supported are: proximity query (to a “probe” object), property query (numeric attribute), shell query (containment within a closed surface), meta-data query, feature query (dome, depression, curvature), trend query (dip plane, vector) and intersection query (with a “probe” object). Queries can be specific for a given object type but in general transcend object types. Standard set theoretical operations for a query results in newly defined regions and are supported within the Gocad^© development environment. This development focuses on queries relevant in the 3-D data integration and interpretation stages of mature geological model development as well as early analysis, typically undertaken before a fully partitioned and attributed 3-D topological model is available.     

Polymorphic queries for P2P systems

When a query is posed on a centralized database, if it refers to attributes that are not defined in the database, the user is warranted to get either an error or an empty set. In contrast, when a query is posed on a peer in a P2P system and refers to attributes not found in the local database, the query should not be simply rejected if the relevant information is available at other peers. This paper proposes a query model for unstructured P2P systems to answer such queries. (a) We introduce a class of polymorphic queries, a revision of conjunctive queries by incorporating type variables to accommodate attributes not defined in the local database. (b) We define the semantics of polymorphic queries in terms of horizontal and vertical object expansions, to find attributes and tuples, respectively, missing from the local database. We show that both expansions can be conducted in a uniform framework. (c) We develop a top-K algorithm to approximately answer polymorphic queries. (d) We also provide a method to merge tuples collected from various peers, based on matching keys specified in polymorphic queries. Our experimental study verifies that polymorphic queries are able to find more sensible information than traditional queries supported by P2P systems, and that these queries can be evaluated efficiently.