An Introduction to Query Understanding

Abstract

This book aims to present a systematic study of practices and theories for query understanding of search engines. The studies in this book can be categorized into three major classes. One class is to figure out what the searcher wants by extracting semantic meaning from the searcher’s keywords, such as query classification, query tagging, and query intent understanding. Another class is to analyze search queries and then translate them into an enhanced query that can produce better search results, such as query spelling correction, query rewriting. The third class is to assist users to refine or suggest queries so as to reduce users’ search effort and satisfy their information needs, such as query auto-completion and query suggestion. This chapter discusses organization, audience, and further reading for this book.