Microsoft shows off improved search

Microsoft scientists have some new thoughts when it comes to search ranking and retrieval accuracy.

New techniques for analyzing search relevance–the way users browse and click through specific content–can improve the algorithms used to rank results, according to two papers submitted by a group of Microsoft researchers.

“Most search engines today use a somewhat two-dimensional approach, matching user queries with the content and link structure of Web pages to return a list of results. We’re looking at how to add a third dimension–the users themselves–to improve the search experience,” said Eugene Agichtein, a researcher in the Mining, Search and Navigation Group within Microsoft Research.

Thirteen Microsoft papers–10 of them collaborations with university researchers–will be presented at the 29th Annual International Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (ACM SIGIR 2006), which started on Sunday and continues through Aug. 11 in Seattle.

One of the papers, “Learning User Interaction Models for Predicting Web Search Results Preferences,” illustrates new techniques for following users beyond the first click-through from a search results page.

Read more: ZDNet