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Web Search Query Rewriting

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Query reformulation; Query expansion; Query assistance; Query suggestion

Definition

Query rewriting in Web search refers to the process of reformulating an original input query to a new query in order to achieve better search results. Reformulation includes but not limited to the following:

  1. 1.

    Adding additional terms to express the search intent more accurately

  2. 2.

    Deleting redundant terms or re-weighting the terms in the original query to emphasize important terms

  3. 3.

    Finding alternative morphological forms of words by stemming each word, and searching for the alternative forms as well

  4. 4.

    Finding synonyms of words, and searching for the synonyms as well

  5. 5.

    Fixing spelling errors and automatically searching for the corrected form or suggesting it in the results

Historical Background

Web search queries are the words users type into web search engines to express their information need. These queries are typically 2–3 words long [7]. Traditional information retrieval allows...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yahoo! Research, Burbank, CA, USA

    Rosie Jones

  2. Yahoo! Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA

    Fuchun Peng

Authors
  1. Rosie Jones
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  2. Fuchun Peng
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Jones, R., Peng, F. (2009). Web Search Query Rewriting. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_461

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