Query Representation and Understanding July 28 , 2011 , Beijing , China Organizers

Understanding the user needs underlying a query can be very difficult, even for a human relevance judge. When evaluating our algorithms, particularly those with a sophisticated query model, it may be wise to use real queries and a notion of relevance that is aligned with real user needs. I will present two lines of work in this area. One is the TREC Web Track, where we attempt to incorporate real Web tasks, real queries and a diverse set of user intents for each query. Click-based clustering or crowdsourcing have been used to identify possible intents. The other line of work is click-based experimentation using result interleaving. Compared to TREC methods, interleaving can detect more subtle and personalized preferences. It is sensitive enough to get significant results from tens of users who install a browser toolbar. Analysis of these different approaches is according to statistical power, ease/availability of use, and fidelity to real user preferences. 10:00 – 10:30 Coffee Break 10:30 – 11:00 Accepted Talks I Using Web Snippets and Query-logs to Measure Implicit Temporal Intents in Queries........................................................................................... 1 Ricardo Campos (LIAAD – INESC Porto, LA) Alípio Mário Jorge (LIAAD – INESC Porto, LA) Gaël Dias (HULTIG, University of Beira Interior) Complex Network Analysis Reveals Kernel-Periphery Structure in Web Search Queries................................................................................... 5 Rishiraj Saha Roy (IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India) Niloy Ganguly (IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India) Monojit Choudhury (Microsoft Research India, Bangalore, India) Naveen Kumar Singh (NIT Durgapur, Durgapur, India) Investigation of Web Query Refinement via Topic Analysis and Learning with Personalization............................................................................ 9