Efficient & Effective Selective Query Rewriting with Efficiency Predictions

Macdonald, C. , Tonellotto, N. and Ounis, I. (2017) Efficient & Effective Selective Query Rewriting with Efficiency Predictions. In: SIGIR 2017: The 40th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Tokyo, Japan, 7-11 Aug 2017, pp. 495-504. ISBN 9781450350228 (doi: 10.1145/3077136.3080827)

Abstract

To enhance effectiveness, a user's query can be rewritten internally by the search engine in many ways, for example by applying proximity, or by expanding the query with related terms. However, approaches that benefit effectiveness often have a negative impact on efficiency, which has impacts upon the user satisfaction, if the query is excessively slow. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for using the predicted execution time of various query rewritings to select between alternatives on a per-query basis, in a manner that ensures both effectiveness and efficiency. In particular, we propose the prediction of the execution time of ephemeral (e.g., proximity) posting lists generated from uni-gram inverted index posting lists, which are used in establishing the permissible query rewriting alternatives that may execute in the allowed time. Experiments examining both the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach demonstrate that a 49% decrease in mean response time (and 62% decrease in 95th-percentile response time) can be attained without significantly hindering the effectiveness of the search engine.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Macdonald, Professor Craig and Ounis, Professor Iadh
• Authors: Macdonald, C., Tonellotto, N., and Ounis, I.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• ISBN: 9781450350228
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 ACM
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the 40th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval: 495-504
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher

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