Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Asia Information Retrieval Symposium

AIRS 2014: Information Retrieval Technology pp 86–99Cite as

Is the First Query the Most Important: An Evaluation of Query Aggregation Schemes in Session Search

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8870))

Abstract

Web users often issue a series of related queries, which form a search session, to fulfill complicated information needs. Query aggregation utilizes and combines multiple queries for session search. Prior research has demonstrated that query aggregation is an effective technique for session search. Consequently, how to effectively weight queries in a session becomes an interesting problem. This paper evaluates various query aggregation schemes and proposes a new three-step query aggregation method. Evaluation on TREC 2011 and 2012 Session tracks shows that the proposed scheme works very well and significantly outperforms the best TREC systems.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Albakour, M.D., Kruschwitz, U.: University of essex at the trec 2012 session track. In: TREC 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bennett, P.N., White, R.W., Chu, W., Dumais, S.T., Bailey, P., Borisyuk, F., Cui, X.: Modeling the impact of short- and long-term behavior on search personalization. In: SIGIR 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Carterette, B., Kanoulas, E., Yilmaz, E.: Simulating simple user behavior for system effectiveness evaluation. In: CIKM 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cormack, G.V., Smucker, M.D., Clarke, C.L.: Efficient and effective spam filtering and re-ranking for large web datasets. Inf. Retr. 14(5), 441–465 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Croft, B., Metzler, D., Strohman, T.: Search Engines Information Retrieval in Practice, 1st edn. Addison-Wesley, USA (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Guan, D., Yang, H., Goharian, N.: Effective structured query formulation for session search. In: TREC 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Guan, D., Zhang, S., Yang, H.: Utilizing query change for session search. In: SIGIR 2013 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Guo, Q., Agichtein, E.: Ready to buy or just browsing?: detecting web searcher goals from interaction data. In: SIGIR 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  9. He, J., Hollink, V., Bosscarino, C., Cornacchia, R., de Vries, A.: Cwi at trec 2011, session, web, and medical. In: TREC 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Jiang, J., Han, S., Wu, J., He, D.: Pitt at trec 2011 session track. In: TREC 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Jiang, J., He, D., Han, S.: Pitt at trec 2012 session track. In: TREC 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Joachims, T.: Optimizing search engines using clickthrough data. In: KDD 2002 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Jones, R., Klinkner, K.L.: Beyond the session timeout: automatic hierarchical segmentation of search topics in query logs. In: CIKM 2008 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kanoulas, E., Carterette, B., Clough, P.D., Sanderson, M.: Evaluating multi-query sessions. In: SIGIR 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kanoulas, E., Carterette, B., Hall, M., Clough, P., Sanderson, M.: Overview of the trec 2011 session track. In: TREC 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kanoulas, E., Carterette, B., Hall, M., Clough, P., Sanderson, M.: Overview of the trec 2012 session track. In: TREC 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kanoulas, E., Clough, P.D., Carterette, B., Sanderson, M.: Session track at trec 2010. In: TREC 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Liu, J., Belkin, N.J.: Personalizing information retrieval for multi-session tasks: the roles of task stage and task type. In: SIGIR 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Liu, T., Zhang, C., Gao, Y., Xiao, W., Huang, H.: BUPT_WILDCAT at trec 2011 session track. In: TREC 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Metzler, D., Croft, W.B.: Combining the language model and inference network approaches to retrieval. Inf. Process. Manage. 40(5), 735–750 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Singh, S.P.: Learning to solve markovian decision processes. Tech. rep., Amherst, MA, USA (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  22. White, R.W., Bennett, P.N., Dumais, S.T.: Predicting short-term interests using activity-based search context. In: CIKM 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  23. White, R.W., Ruthven, I., Jose, J.M., Rijsbergen, C.J.V.: Evaluating implicit feedback models using searcher simulations. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 23(3), 325–361 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Xiang, B., Jiang, D., Pei, J., Sun, X., Chen, E., Li, H.: Context-aware ranking in web search. In: SIGIR 2010 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Zhai, C., Lafferty, J.: A study of smoothing methods for language models applied to information retrieval. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 22(2), 179–214 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft, 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, USA, 98025

    Dongyi Guan

  2. Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University, 37th and O Street NW, Washington,DC, 20057, USA

    Hui Yang

Authors
  1. Dongyi Guan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hui Yang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Visual Informatic, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

    Azizah Jaafar

  2. Institute of Visual Informatics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

    Nazlena Mohamad Ali

  3. Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

    Shahrul Azman Mohd Noah

  4. Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, 9, Dublin, Ireland

    Alan F. Smeaton

  5. Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology, 4001, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Peter Bruza

  6. Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

    Zainab Abu Bakar  & Nursuriati Jamil  & 

  7. Cyber Security Center, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Kem Sungai Besi, 57000, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Tengku Mohd Tengku Sembok

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Guan, D., Yang, H. (2014). Is the First Query the Most Important: An Evaluation of Query Aggregation Schemes in Session Search. In: Jaafar, A., et al. Information Retrieval Technology. AIRS 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8870. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12844-3_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12844-3_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12843-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12844-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation