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You already see it on Amazon.
From The Noisy Channel

You already see it on Amazon.

You already see it on Amazon. Do a search for “matrix”: not only do you only see Keanu Reeves movie results on the first page, but the left rail focuses on movies...

Search: Intent, Not Inventory
From The Noisy Channel

Search: Intent, Not Inventory

When I enter a physical store, my intent is “I want to buy X” or “I’m looking for something in order to do X.” It’s not “Show me the products that satisfy characteristics...

Dances with HiPPOs
From The Noisy Channel

Dances with HiPPOs

Decision making, especially at technology companies, is supposed to be data-driven. Unfortunately, even in this wondrous age of science, decisions often depends...

Martin, thanks for the kind words.
From The Noisy Channel

Martin, thanks for the kind words.

Martin, thanks for the kind words. The TunkRank that Jason Adams implemented has been down for a while. I’m not aware of any other implementation that is available...

I’m hardly an expert on legal IR. But here are a few pointers:
From The Noisy Channel

I’m hardly an expert on legal IR. But here are a few pointers:

I’m hardly an expert on legal IR. But here are a few pointers: Passage retrieval in legal texts [PDF] Passage Retrieval Starting from Patent Claims A Clef-Ip 2013...

I can only offer high-level guidance in a comment thread.
From The Noisy Channel

I can only offer high-level guidance in a comment thread.

I can only offer high-level guidance in a comment thread. But it sounds like you might benefit from collecting trigrams as well as bigrams. If mug tree stands are...

I discuss it a bit in this post: https://queryunderstanding.com/query-expansion-2d68d47cf9c8
From The Noisy Channel

I discuss it a bit in this post: https://queryunderstanding.com/query-expansion-2d68d47cf9c8

I discuss it a bit in this post: https://queryunderstanding.com/query-expansion-2d68d47cf9c8

Broad and Ambiguous Search Queries
From The Noisy Channel

Broad and Ambiguous Search Queries

A typical approach for processing search queries is to retrieve a set of matching documents and then rank them with a relevance scoring function. This simple approach...

Premature Optimization is (Still) the Root of All Evil
From The Noisy Channel

Premature Optimization is (Still) the Root of All Evil

A lesson that we software engineers learn early in our careers is that “premature optimization is the root of all evil.” This gem of advice from the inimitableDonald...

Is Relevance Part of the Problem?
From The Noisy Channel

Is Relevance Part of the Problem?

Much of the innovation in information retrieval and recommender systems focuses on better targeting in order to improve relevance. Those of us who develop suchin...

Thanks Tony!
From The Noisy Channel

Thanks Tony!

Thanks Tony! And you’re right thatI’m oversimplifying. My excuse is that it was already a 2,000-word post. :-)

Search: The Whole Story
From The Noisy Channel

Search: The Whole Story

Query understanding and relevance are key aspects of search, but they don’t tell the whole story. A holistic framework for search calls for a broader perspective...

Search Engines: A Human Perspective
From The Noisy Channel

Search Engines: A Human Perspective

At first glance, the design and development of search engines appear to be concerned mainly with computer science — particularly information retrieval, machine,...

Reflecting on TunkRank
From The Noisy Channel

Reflecting on TunkRank

One of my earliest blog posts was “A Twitter Analog to PageRank”, in which I proposed a simple measure for Twitter influence.As the title indicates, the measure...

I recommend the links at the bottom of Peter Norvig’s post: https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html
From The Noisy Channel

I recommend the links at the bottom of Peter Norvig’s post: https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

I recommend the links at the bottom of Peter Norvig’s post: https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

Mike, I appreciate your detailed response.
From The Noisy Channel

Mike, I appreciate your detailed response.

Mike, I appreciate your detailed response. And I agree that there are worse possible worlds than our present one — specifically, that replacing disclosed advertising...

Are Ads Really That Bad?
From The Noisy Channel

Are Ads Really That Bad?

Long-time readers know that I’m not a fan of ads. Specifically, I’m not a fan of ad-supported business models. But is that just a matter of personal taste? Or does...

Activate 2018: Search in Practice
From The Noisy Channel

Activate 2018: Search in Practice

I don’t always attend conferences. But when I do, I prefer conferences full of search practitioners focused on solving real-world problems.I just came back from...

Thanks for the kind words.
From The Noisy Channel

Thanks for the kind words.

Thanks for the kind words. As for how to get your team to approach query understanding, it’s hard to give generic advice. But if you can find a way to categorize...

Query Understanding, Divided into Three Parts
From The Noisy Channel

Query Understanding, Divided into Three Parts

Julius Caesar started his famous text on the Gallic wars with the sentence “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.”Like Gaul, query understanding is, as a whole...
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