From keywords to queries: Discovering the user's intended meaning

Abstract

Regarding web searches, users have become used to keyword-based search interfaces due to their ease of use. However, this implies a semantic gap between the user's information need and the input of search engines, as keywords are a simplification of the real user query. Thus, the same set of keywords can be used to search different information. Besides, retrieval approaches based only on syntactic matches with user keywords are not accurate enough when users look for information not so popular on the Web. So, there is a growing interest in developing semantic search engines that overcome these limitations. In this paper, we focus on the front-end of semantic search systems and propose an approach to translate a list of user keywords into an unambiguous query, expressed in a formal language, that represents the exact semantics intended by the user. We aim at not sacrificing any possible interpretation while avoiding generating semantically equivalent queries. To do so, we apply several semantic techniques that consider the properties of the operators and the semantics behind the keywords. Moreover, our approach also allows us to present the queries to the user in a compact representation. Experimental results show the feasibility of our approach and its effectiveness in facilitating the users to express their intended query. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.