This document describes related entity finding on the web and semantic search. It discusses using the structure of semantic data and ontologies to better understand user intent and the meaning of queries and content. This can help improve search accuracy and enable new types of searches beyond traditional keyword matching. The document provides examples of related entity recommendations during web searches and outlines the workflow used to extract features from query and interaction data to identify and rank related entities.

1. Related Entity Finding
on the Web
Peter Mika
Senior Research Scientist
Yahoo! Research
Joint work with B. Barla Cambazoglu and Roi Blanco

2. - 2 -
Search is really fast, without necessarily being intelligent

3. - 3 -
Why Semantic Search? Part I
• Improvements in IR are harder and harder to come by
– Machine learning using hundreds of features
• Text-based features for matching
• Graph-based features provide authority
– Heavy investment in computational power, e.g. real-time
indexing and instant search
• Remaining challenges are not computational, but in
modeling user cognition
– Need a deeper understanding of the query, the content and/or
the world at large
– Could Watson explain why the answer is Toronto?

4. - 4 -
What it’s like to be a machine?
Roi Blanco

5. - 5 -
What it’s like to be a machine?
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✪✚✜ΔΤΟŨŸÏĞÊϖυτρ℠≠⅛⌫Γ
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⏎⌥°¶§ΥΦΦΦ✗✕☐

6. - 7 -
Ambiguity

7. - 8 -
Why Semantic Search? Part II
• The Semantic Web is here
– Data
• Large amounts of RDF data
• Heterogeneous schemas
• Diverse quality
– End users
• Not skilled in writing complex
queries (e.g. SPARQL)
• Not familiar with the data
• Novel applications
– Complementing document search
• Rich Snippets, related entities,
direct answers
– Other novel search tasks

8. - 9 -
Semantic Web data
• Linked Data
– Data published as RDF documents
linked to other RDF documents and/or
using SPARQL end-points
– Community effort to re-publish large
public datasets (e.g. Dbpedia, open
government data)
• RDFa and microdata
– Data embedded inside HTML pages
– Schema.org collaboration among Bing,
Google, Yahoo and Yandex
– Facebook Open Graph Protocol (OGP)

9. - 10 -
Other novel applications
• Aggregation of search results
– e.g. price comparison across websites
• Analysis and prediction
– e.g. world temperature by 2020
• Semantic profiling
– Ontology-based modeling of user interests
• Semantic log analysis
– Linking query and navigation logs to ontologies
• Task completion
– e.g. booking a vacation using a combination of services
• Conversational search
– e.g. PARLANCE EU FP7 project
Web usage mining
with Semantic Analysis
Fri 3pm
Web usage mining
with Semantic Analysis
Fri 3pm

10. - 11 -
Interactive search and task completion

11. Semantic Search

12. - 13 -
Semantic Search: a definition
• Semantic search is a retrieval paradigm that
– Makes use of the structure of the data or explicit schemas to
understand user intent and the meaning of content
– Exploits this understanding at some part of the search process
• Emerging field of research
– Exploiting Semantic Annotations in Information Retrieval (2008-
2012)
– Semantic Search (SemSearch) workshop series (2008-2011)
– Entity-oriented search workshop (2010-2011)
– Joint Intl. Workshop on Semantic and Entity-oriented Search (2012)
– SIGIR 2012 tracks on Structured Data and Entities
• Related fields:
– XML retrieval, Keyword search in databases, NL retrieval

13. - 14 -
Search is required in the presence of ambiguity
Query
Data
KeywordsKeywords
NL
Questions
NL
Questions
Form- / facet-
based Inputs
Form- / facet-
based Inputs
Structured Queries
(SPARQL)
Structured Queries
(SPARQL)
OWL ontologies with
rich, formal
semantics
OWL ontologies with
rich, formal
semantics
Structured
RDF data
Structured
RDF data
Semi-
Structured
RDF data
Semi-
Structured
RDF data
RDF data
embedded in
text (RDFa)
RDF data
embedded in
text (RDFa)
Ambiguities: interpretation
Ambiguities: interpretation, extraction errors, data quality, confidence/trust

14. - 15 -
list search
related entity finding
entity search
SemSearch 2010/11
list completion
SemSearch 2011
TREC ELC taskTREC REF-LOD task
semantic search
Common tasks in Semantic Search

15. Related entity ranking
in web search

16. - 17 -
Motivation
• Some users are short on time
– Need for direct answers
– Query expansion, question-answering, information boxes, rich
results…
• Other users have time at their hand
– Long term interests such as sports, celebrities, movies and
music
– Long running tasks such as travel planning

17. - 18 -
Example user sessions

18. - 19 -
Spark: related entity recommendations in web search
• A search assistance tool for exploration
• Recommend related entities given the user’s current query
– Cf. Entity Search at SemSearch, TREC Entity Track
• Ranking explicit relations in a Knowledge Base
– Cf. TREC Related Entity Finding in LOD (REF-LOD) task
• A previous version of the system live since 2010
• van Zwol et al.: Faceted exploration of image search results. WWW
2010: 961-970

19. - 20 -
Spark example I.

20. - 21 -
Spark example II.

21. - 22 -
How does it work?
/user/torzecn/
Shared/Entity-
Relationship_Graphs
Yalinda feed parser
(GFFeedMapper,
GFFeedReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/{1,2,3}/
yalinda/phyfacet/data
/projects/gridfaces/
feed/yahooomg/
Y! OMG feed parser
(GFFeedMapper,
GFFeedReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/6/yahooomg/
phyfacet/data
/projects/gridfaces/
feed/geo
Y! Geo feed parser
(GFFeedMapper,
GFFeedReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/10/geo/
phyfacet/data
/projects/gridfaces/
feed/yahootv
Y! TV feed parser
(GFFeedMapper,
GFFeedReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/5
/projects/gridfaces/
feed/editorialdata/
data/objects
Editorial feed parser
(GFFeedMapper,
GFEditorialMergeReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/logicalobj/
dataArchive/
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/
logicalfacet/data
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/logicalobj/
data
/projects/gridfaces/
feed/editorialdata/
data/facets
GFDumpMain-First
(DumpFirstMapper,
DumpFirstReducer)
Empty/missing
Activated
Deactivated
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
STEP 1: FEED PARSING PIPELINE
GFDumpMain-Second
(DumpSecondMapper,
DumpSecondReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinputTmp
CreateDictionary
(DictionaryMapper,
DistinctReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/
dictionary
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
logs/week{WNo}
/data/SDS/data/
search_US
CreateIntermediate
LogFormat
(NullValueSillyMapp
er, DistinctReducer)
CreateQuerySessions
CommonModelFilter
(FiltererMapper,
FiltererReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
qsessions lfi terer
CreateQuerySessions
CommonModel
(SillyMapper,
QuerySessionsCreate
SessionsReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
qsessions_cm
CreateQueryTermsJoin
DictionaryAndLogs
(LeftJoinMapper,
LeftJoinReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
qtermsjoindictionarylog
CreateQueryTermsJoin
QTermsAndLogs
(SillyMapper,
ImplodeReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
qterms_cm
CreateFlickrIntermediate
LogFormat
(FlickrReformatMapper)
/projects/gridfaces/
ifl ckr/feed
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
ifl ckrtagsintermediate
CreateFlickrTagsCommon
ModelFilter
(FiltererMapper,
FiltererReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
ifl ckrtags lfi terer
CreateFlickrTagsCommon
ModelFilter
(SillyMapper,
ImplodeReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
ifl ckr_cm
General
Query logs
Flickr
Twitter
/projects/rtds/twitter/
refi hose
CreateTwitterIntermediate
LogFormat
(NullValueSillyMapper,
DistinctReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
twitter_logs/week{WNo}
CreateTweetsCommon
ModelFilter
(FiltererMapper,
FiltererReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
tweets lfi terer
CreateTweetsCommon
Model
(SillyMapper,
ImplodeReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
tweets_cm
DistinctUsersTwitter
(SillyMapper,
DistinctReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/tweets/
distinctusers
DistinctUsers ifl ckr
(SillyMapper,
DistinctReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/ ifl ckr/
distinctusers
DistinctUsersQSessions
(SillyMapper,
DistinctReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
qsessions/distinctusers
DistinctUsersQTerms
(SillyMapper,
DistinctReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/qterms/
distinctusers
CountUsers
(CounterMapper,
CounterReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
distinctusers
CountEvents
(CounterMapper,
CounterReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
countevents
STEP 2: PREPROCESSING PIPELINE (before feature extraction and ranking)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
probability
EventProbabilityQTerms
(ProbabilityMapper,
ProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
qterms_cm
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
countevents
EventConditionalProbabilityQterms
(ConditionalProbabilityMapper,
ConditionalProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
conditionalprobability
EventJointProbabilityQterms
(JointProbabilityMapper,
ProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
jointprobability
EventJointUserProbabilityQTerms
(JointUserProbabilityMapper,
JointUserProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
countusers
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
jointuserprobability
EventConditionalUserProb
abilityQterms
(ConditionalUserProbability
PrepareMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserproba
bility1/qterms
ConditionalUserProbability
2_3-qt
(ConditionalUserProbability
PrepareMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserprobability2/
qterms/query
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserprobability2/
qterms/queryfacet
EventConditionalUser
Probability3_qterms
(SillyMapper,
ConditionalUserProba
bilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/qterms/
week{WNo}/
conditionaluserprobability
EventEntropyQTerms
(EntropyMapper,
EntropyReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
entropy
EventPMI1QTerms
(SillyMapper,
JoinUnaryMetricReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
pmiqterms
EventPMIQTerms
(PMIMapper,
PMIReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
pmi
EventKLDivergenceUnary1QTerms
(KLDivergenceUnaryJoinerMapper,
JoinUnaryMetricReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
klunaryqterms
EventKLDivergenceUnaryQTerms
(SillyMapper,
KLDivergenceUnaryReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
kldivergenceunary
EventCosineSimilarityQTerms
(PMIMapper,
CosineSimilarityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
cosinesimilarity
Extracted features
Others
STEP 3a: FEATURE EXTRACTION (QUERY TERMS) PIPELINE
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
probability
EventProbabilityFlickr
(ProbabilityMapper,
ProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
ifl ckr_cm
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
countevents
EventConditionalProbabilityFlickr
(ConditionalProbabilityMapper,
ConditionalProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
conditionalprobability
EventJointProbabilityFlickr
(JointProbabilityMapper,
ProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
jointprobability
EventJointUserProbabilityFlickr
(JointUserProbabilityMapper,
JointUserProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
countusers
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
jointuserprobability
EventConditionalUserProb
abilityFlickr
(ConditionalUserProbability
PrepareMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserproba
bility1/ ifl ckr
ConditionalUserProbability
2_3-fl
(ConditionalUserProbability
PrepareMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserprobability2/
ifl ckr/query
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserprobability2/
ifl ckr/queryfacet
EventConditionalUser
Probability3_ ifl ckr
(SillyMapper,
ConditionalUserProba
bilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/ ifl ckr/
week{WNo}/
conditionaluserprobability
EventEntropyFlickr
(EntropyMapper,
EntropyReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
entropy
EventPMI1Flickr
(SillyMapper,
JoinUnaryMetricReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
pmi ifl ckr
EventPMIFlickr
(PMIMapper,
PMIReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
pmi
EventKLDivergenceUnary1Flickr
(KLDivergenceUnaryJoinerMapper,
JoinUnaryMetricReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
klunary ifl ckr
EventKLDivergenceUnaryFlickr
(SillyMapper,
KLDivergenceUnaryReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
kldivergenceunary
EventCosineSimilarityFlickr
(PMIMapper,
CosineSimilarityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/ ifl ckr/
week{WNo}/
cosinesimilarity
Extracted features
Others
STEP 3c: FEATURE EXTRACTION (FLICKR TAGS) PIPELINE
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
probability
EventProbabilityTweets
(ProbabilityMapper,
ProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
tweets_cm
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
countevents
EventConditionalProbabilityTweets
(ConditionalProbabilityMapper,
ConditionalProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
conditionalprobability
EventJointProbabilityTweets
(JointProbabilityMapper,
ProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
jointprobability
EventJointUserProbabilityTweets
(JointUserProbabilityMapper,
JointUserProbabilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
countusers
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
jointuserprobability
EventConditionalUserProb
abilityTweets
(ConditionalUserProbability
PrepareMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserproba
bility1/tweets
ConditionalUserProbability
2_3-tw
(ConditionalUserProbability
PrepareMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserprobability2/
tweets/query
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
conditionaluserprobability2/
tweets/queryfacet
EventConditionalUser
Probability3_tweets
(SillyMapper,
ConditionalUserProba
bilityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/tweets/
week{WNo}/
conditionaluserprobability
EventEntropyTweets
(EntropyMapper,
EntropyReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
entropy
EventPMI1Tweets
(SillyMapper,
JoinUnaryMetricReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
pmitweets
EventPMITweets
(PMIMapper,
PMIReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
pmi
EventKLDivergenceUnary1Tweets
(KLDivergenceUnaryJoinerMapper,
JoinUnaryMetricReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
klunarytweets
EventKLDivergenceUnary1Tweets
(SillyMapper,
KLDivergenceUnaryReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
kldivergenceunary
EventCosineSimilarityTweets
(PMIMapper,
CosineSimilarityReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
cosinesimilarity
Extracted features
Others
STEP 3d: FEATURE EXTRACTION (TWEETS) PIPELINE
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
probability
unaryfeaturemerger1_qterms
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary1_qterms
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
conditionalprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
jointprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
jointuserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
conditionaluserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
entropy
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
pmi
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
kldivergenceunary
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qterms/week{WNo}/
cosinesimilarity
STEP 4a: FEATURE MERGING (QUERY TERMS) PIPELINE
unaryfeaturemerger2_qterms
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary2_qterms
symmetricfeaturemerger_qterms
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
SymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
symmetric_qterms
asymmetricfeaturemerger_qterms
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
asymmetric_qterms
reverseasymmetricfeaturemerger_qterms
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOM
E/rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_
qterms
Features
Others
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/
week{WNo}/
probability
unaryfeaturemerger1_qsessions
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary1_qsessions
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/
week{WNo}/
conditionalprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/
week{WNo}/
jointprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/
week{WNo}/
jointuserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/week{WNo}/
conditionaluserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME
/rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/
week{WNo}/entropy
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/
week{WNo}/pmi
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/
week{WNo}/
kldivergenceunary
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
qsessions/week{WNo}/
cosinesimilarity
STEP 4b: FEATURE MERGING (QUERY SESSIONS) PIPELINE
unaryfeaturemerger2_qsessions
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary2_qsessions
symmetricfeaturemerger_qsessions
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
SymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
symmetric_qsessions
asymmetricfeaturemerger_qsessions
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
asymmetric_qsessions
reverseasymmetricfeaturemerger_qsessions
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOM
E/rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_
qsessions
Features
Others
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
probability
unaryfeaturemerger1_ ifl ckr
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary1_ ifl ckr
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
conditionalprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
jointprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
jointuserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/ ifl ckr/
week{WNo}/
conditionaluserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
entropy
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/pmi
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ifl ckr/week{WNo}/
kldivergenceunary
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/ ifl ckr/
week{WNo}/
cosinesimilarity
STEP 4c: FEATURE MERGING (FLICKR TAGS) PIPELINE
unaryfeaturemerger2_ ifl ckr
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary2_ ifl ckr
symmetricfeaturemerger_ ifl ckr
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
SymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
symmetric_ ifl ckr
asymmetricfeaturemerger_ ifl ckr
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
asymmetric_ ifl ckr
reverseasymmetricfeaturemerger_ ifl ckr
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOM
E/rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_f
lickr
Features
Others
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
probability
unaryfeaturemerger1_tweets
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary1_tweets
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
conditionalprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
jointprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
jointuserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/tweets/
week{WNo}/
conditionaluserprobability
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
entropy
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
pmi
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
kldivergenceunary
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
tweets/week{WNo}/
cosinesimilarity
STEP 4d: FEATURE MERGING (TWEETS) PIPELINE
unaryfeaturemerger2_tweets
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
unary2_tweets
symmetricfeaturemerger_tweets
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
SymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
symmetric_tweets
asymmetricfeaturemerger_tweets
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
asymmetric_tweets
reverseasymmetricfeaturemerger_tweets
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOM
E/rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_t
weets
Features
Others
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
STEP 5a: FEATURE EXTRACTION AND MERGING (COMBINED FEATURES) PIPELINE
combinedfeaturem
erger_qsessions
(CombinedFeature
MergerMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_qsessions
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
combined_qsessions
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_qterms
combinedfeaturem
erger_qterms
(CombinedFeature
MergerMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
combined_qterms
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_ ifl ckr
combinedfeaturem
erger_ ifl ckr
(CombinedFeature
MergerMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
combined_ ifl ckr
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
reverseasymetric_tweets
combinedfeaturem
erger_tweets
(CombinedFeature
MergerMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
combined_tweets
joinfeatures
(JoinerMapper,
JoinerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeatures3
STEP 5b: FEATURE EXTRACTION AND MERGING (GRAPH) PIPELINE
Features
Others
$VIS_GRID_HOME
/rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeatures3
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
graph_sharedconnect_1
(GRSharedConnectMapper,
GRSharedConnectReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/graph/
sharedconnect
graph_sharedconnect_2
(NullValueSillyMapper,
CounterReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/graph/
sharedconnect_2
join_graph
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
SymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeature_g_1
graph_popularity_rank_all
(GRPopularityRankMapper,
GRPopularityRankReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/graph/
popularity_rank_all
graph_popularity_rank_directed
(GRPopularityRankMapper,
GRPopularityRankReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/graph/
popularity_rank_directed
unaryfeaturemerger_entpopmov
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeature_pop1
unaryfeaturemerger_entpopmov2
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME
/rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeature_pop2
unaryfeaturemerger_entpopmov3
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeature_pop3
unaryfeaturemerger_entpopmov4
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeature_pop4
STEP 5c: FEATURE MERGING (POPULARITY) PIPELINE
Features
Others
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankinput
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeature_pop4
WebCitationTotalHits
Normalization
(SillyMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
web_citation/
total_hits
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
webcitation_totalhits
WebCitationDeepHits
Normalization
(SillyMapper)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
web_citation/
deep_hits
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
webcitation_deephits
asymmetricfeaturemerger_webcitation
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
AsymmetricFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
asymmetric_webcitation
coverage
(QueryCountMapper,
QueryCountReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
coverage/week{WNo}
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
logs/week{WNo}
joincov1
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeaturescov1
joincov2
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeaturescov2
joinwikipop1
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
/user/barla/Spark/
wikiResultCounts
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeatureswikipop1
joinwikipop2
(MergeFeaturesMapper,
UnaryFeatureMergerReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/
joinfeatureswikipop2
jointypes
(EntityRelationTypeMapper,
EntityRelationTypeReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/jointypes
STEP 6: RANKING PIPELINE
MLR scoring
(/homes/barla/gf_mlr/
mlr_rank)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
statsmerge/jointypes
/homes/barla/gf_mlr/
gbrank.xml
/homes/barla/gf_mlr/
header.tsv
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ranking
MLR scoring
(SillyMapper,
DisambiguationReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ranking-disambiguated
groupmax
(SillyMapper,
OutputMaxReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/tmp/
ranking
formatranking
(RankingFormatterMapper,
RankingFormatterReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ranking nfi al
STEP 7: DATAPACK GENERATION PIPELINE
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
rankprepout/spark/
ranking nfi al
mergerank
(GFFeedMapper,
GFFeedReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfrankout
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfrankout/1/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfrankout/2/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfrankout/3/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfrankout/4/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfrankout/5/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfrankout10/geo/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/1/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/2/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/3/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/4/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/5/yalinda/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/10/geo/
phyfacet/ranking/spark
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/1/yalinda/
phyfacet/data
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/2/yalinda/
phyfacet/data
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/3/yalinda/
phyfacet/data
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/4/yalinda/
phyfacet/data
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/5/yalinda/
phyfacet/data
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/10/geo/
phyfacet/data
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
gfstorageall/
logicalobj/data
dumper1
(DumpFirstMapper,
DumpFirstReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
platdumpTmp
dumper2
(DumpSecondMapper,
DumpSecondReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
platdump
datapack
(Mapper,
YISFacetMergeReducer)
$VIS_GRID_HOME/
datapack

22. - 23 -
High-Level Architecture View
Entity
graph
Data
preprocessing
Feature
extraction
Model
learning
Feature
sources
Editorial
judgements
Datapack
Ranking
model
Ranking and
disambiguation
Entity
data
Features

23. - 24 -
Spark Architecture
Entity
graph
Data
preprocessing
Feature
extraction
Model
learning
Feature
sources
Editorial
judgements
Datapack
Ranking
model
Ranking and
disambiguation
Entity
data
Features

24. - 25 -
Entity
graph
Data
preprocessing
Feature
extraction
Model
learning
Feature
sources
Editorial
judgements
Datapack
Ranking
model
Ranking and
disambiguation
Entity
data
Features
Data Preprocessing

25. - 26 -
Entity graph
• 3.4 million entities, 160 million relations
• Locations: Internet Locality, Wikipedia, Yahoo! Travel
• Athletes, teams: Yahoo! Sports
• People, characters, movies, TV shows, albums: Dbpedia
• Example entities
• Dbpedia Brad_Pitt Brad Pitt Movie_Actor
• Dbpedia Brad_Pitt Brad Pitt Movie_Producer
• Dbpedia Brad_Pitt Brad Pitt Person
• Dbpedia Brad_Pitt Brad Pitt TV_Actor
• Dbpedia Brad_Pitt_(boxer) Brad Pitt Person
• Example relations
• Dbpedia Dbpedia Brad_Pitt Angelina_Jolie Person_IsPartnerOf_Person
• Dbpedia Dbpedia Brad_Pitt Angelina_Jolie MovieActor_CoCastsWith_MovieActor
• Dbpedia Dbpedia Brad_Pitt Angelina_Jolie MovieProducer_ProducesMovieCastedBy_MovieActor

26. - 27 -
Entity graph challenges
• Coverage of the query volume
– New entities and entity types
– Additional inference
– International data
– Aliases, e.g. jlo, big apple, thomas cruise mapother iv
• Freshness
– People query for a movie long before it’s released
• Irrelevant entity and relation types
– E.g. voice actors who co-acted in a movie, cities in a continent
• Data quality
– United States Senate career of Barack Obama is not a person
– Andy Lau has never acted in Iron Man 3

27. - 28 -
Entity
graph
Data
preprocessing
Feature
extraction
Model
learning
Feature
sources
Editorial
judgements
Datapack
Ranking
model
Ranking and
disambiguation
Entity
data
Features
Feature extraction

28. - 29 -
Feature extraction from text
• Text sources
– Query terms
– Query sessions
– Flickr tags
– Tweets
• Common representation
Input tweet:
Brad Pitt married to Angelina Jolie in Las Vegas
Output event:
Brad Pitt + Angelina Jolie
Brad Pitt + Las Vegas
Angelina Jolie + Las Vegas

29. - 30 -
Features
• Unary
– Popularity features from text: probability, entropy, wiki id
popularity …
– Graph features: PageRank on the entity graph, wikipedia, web
graph
– Type features: entity type
• Binary
– Co-occurrence features from text: conditional probability, joint
probability …
– Graph features: common neighbors …
– Type features: relation type

30. - 31 -
Feature extraction challenges
• Efficiency of text tagging
– Hadoop Map/Reduce
• More features are not always better
– Can lead to over-fitting without sufficient training data

31. - 32 -
Entity
graph
Data
preprocessing
Feature
extraction
Model
learning
Feature
sources
Editorial
judgements
Datapack
Ranking
model
Ranking and
disambiguation
Entity
data
Features
Model Learning

32. - 33 -
Model Learning
• Training data created by editors (five grades)
400 Brandi adriana lima Brad Pitt person Embarassing
1397 David H. andy garcia Brad Pitt person Mostly Related
3037 Jennifer benicio del toro Brad Pitt person Somewhat Related
4615 Sarah burn after reading Brad Pitt person Excellent
9853 Jennifer fight club movie Brad Pitt person Perfect
• Join between the editorial data and the feature file
• Trained a regression model using GBDT
–Gradient Boosted Decision Trees
• 10-fold cross validation optimizing NDCG and tuning
•number of trees
•number of nodes per tree

33. - 34 -
Feature importance
RANK FEATURE IMPORTANCE
1 Relation type 100
2 PageRank (Related entity) 99.6075
3 Entropy – Flickr 94.7832
4 Probability – Flickr 82.6172
5 Probability – Query terms 78.9377
6 Shared connections 68.296
7 Cond. Probability – Flickr 68.0496
8 PageRank (Entity) 57.6078
9 KL divergence – Flickr 55.4604
10 KL divergence – Query terms 55.0662

34. - 35 -
Impact of training data
Number of training instances (judged relations)

35. - 36 -
Performance by query-entity type
•High overall performance but some types are more difficult
•Locations
– Editors downgrade popular entities such as businesses
NDCG by type of the query entity

36. - 37 -
Model Learning challenges
• Editorial preferences not necessarily coincide with usage
– Users click a lot more on people than expected
– Image bias?
• Alternative: optimize for usage data
– Clicks turned into labels or preferences
– Size of the data is not a concern
– Gains are computed from normalized CTR/COEC
– See van Zwol et al. Ranking Entity Facets Based on User Click
Feedback. ICSC 2010: 192-199.
couple of hundred entities and their facets we find that
linear combination of the conditional probabilities gives
t performance on the collected judgements using wqt = 2,
= 0.5, and wf t = 1. However, the editorial data was not
stantial enough to learn a ranking with GBDT.
Click-through Rate versus Click over Expected Click
From the image search query logs, we collect the user click
a that is related to the facets. This allows us to compute the
ck-through rate (CTR) on a facet for a given entity that is
ected in a user query and for which the facets were shown
he user. Let clickse,f be the number of clicks on a facet
ty f show in relation to entity e, and viewse,f the number
times the facet f is shown to a user for a related entity e,
n the probability of a click on a facet entity f for a given
ty e can be modelled as ctre,f :
ctre,f =
clickse,f
viewse,f
(2)
n Figure 3 the conditional click-through rate is shown for
first ten positions. It shows the CTR per position for every
ge view where one of the facets is clicked, aggregated over
coece,f =
cl
PP
p=1 vi
Zhang and Jones [3] refer to
expected clicks, based on the de
expected clicks given the positio
C. Gradient Boosted Decision Tr
Stochastic gradient boosted dec
the most widely used learning alg
today. Gradient tree boosting co
sion model, utilizing decision tr
One advantage over other learn
trees in general is that the feat
are highly interpretable. GBDT
different loss functions can be u
research presented here we used
our loss function. In related work,
pairwise and ranking specific lo
well at improving search relevanc
shallow decision trees, trees in s
on a randomly selected subset of
prone to over-fitting [14]. For the
shown in the search engine
he ground truth for creating
set used by the gradient
onal Probabilities
of the facets search expe-
unction rank(e, f) that is
onal probabilities extracted
⇥Pqs(f|e)+wf t ⇥Pf t (f, e)
(1)
e) are the conditional prob-
he weights for the different
qt), query session (qs) and
l judgements collected for
their facets we find that
ditional probabilities gives
udgements using wqt = 2,
the editorial data was not
ng with GBDT.
k over Expected Click
gs, we collect the user click
all entities. Observe that the CTR declines when the position
at which a facet is shown increases.
We introduce a second click model, based on the notion
of clicks over expected clicks (COEC). To allows us to deal
with the so called position bias – where facets appearing in
lower positions are less likely to be clicked even if they are
relevant [2]. This phenomenon isoften observed in Web search
and we adopt the COEC model proposed by Chapelle and
Zhang [11]. In that model, we estimate ctrp as the aggregated
ctr – over all queries and sessions – in position p for all
positions P. Let then clickse,f be the number of clicks on
a facet entity f show in relation to entity e, and viewse,f p
the
number of times the facet f is shown to a user for a related
entity e at position p. The probability of a click over expected
click on a facet entity f for a given entity e can then be
modelled as coece,f :
coece,f =
clickse,f
PP
p=1 viewse,f p ⇥ ctrp
(3)
Zhang and Jones [3] refer to this method as clicks over
expected clicks, based on the denominator that includes the
expected clicks given the positions that the url appeared in.
C. Gradient Boosted Decision Trees
Stochastic gradient boosted decision trees (GBDT) is one of

37. - 38 -
Entity
graph
Data
preprocessing
Feature
extraction
Model
learning
Feature
sources
Editorial
judgements
Datapack
Ranking
model
Ranking and
disambiguation
Entity
data
Features
Ranking and Disambiguation

38. - 39 -
Ranking and Disambiguation
• We apply the ranking function offline to the data
• Disambiguation
– How many times a given wiki id was retrieved for queries containing the entity
name?
Brad Pitt Brad_Pitt 21158
Brad Pitt Brad_Pitt_(boxer) 247
XXX XXX_(movie) 1775
XXX XXX_(Asia_album) 89
XXX XXX_(ZZ_Top_album) 87
XXX XXX_(Danny_Brown_album) 67
– PageRank for disambiguating locations (wiki ids are not available)
• Expansion to query patterns
– Entity name + context, e.g. brad pitt actor

39. - 40 -
Ranking and Disambiguation challenges
• Disambiguation cases that are too close to call
– Fargo Fargo_(film) 3969
– Fargo Fargo,_North_Dakota 4578
• Disambiguation across Wikipedia and other sources

40. - 41 -
Evaluation #2: Side-by-side testing
• Comparing two systems
– A/B comparison, e.g. current system under development and production
system
– Scale: A is better, B is better
• Separate tests for relevance and image quality
– Image quality can significantly influence user perceptions
– Images can violate safe search rules
• Classification of errors
– Results: missing important results/contains irrelevant results, too few results,
entities are not fresh, more/less diverse, should not have triggered
– Images: bad photo choice, blurry, group shots, nude/racy etc.
• Notes
– Borderline, set one entities relate to the movie Psy but the query is most likely
about Gangnam style
– Blondie and Mickey Gilley are 70’s performers and do not belong on a list of
60’s musicians.
– There is absolutely no relation between Finland and California.

41. - 42 -
Evaluation #3: Bucket testing
• Also called online evaluation
– Comparing against baseline version of the system
– Baseline does not change during the test
• Small % of search traffic redirected to test system, another
small % to the baseline system
• Data collection over at least a week, looking for stat.
significant differences that are also stable over time
• Metrics in web search
– Coverage and Click-through Rate (CTR)
– Searches per browser-cookie (SPBC)
– Other key metrics should not impacted negatively, e.g.
Abandonment and retry rate, Daily Active Users (DAU),
Revenue Per Search (RPS), etc.

42. - 43 -
Coverage before and after the new system
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80
Days
Coverage
Coverage before Spark
Trend before Spark
Coverage after Spark
Trend after Spark
Spark is deployed
in production
Before release:
Flat, lower
After release:
Flat, higher

43. - 44 -
Click-through rate (CTR) before and after the new system
Before release:
Gradually
degrading performance
due to lack of fresh data
After release:
Learning effect:
users are starting to
use the tool again
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80
Days
CTR
CTR before Spark
Trend before Spark
CTR after Spark
Trend after Spark
Spark is deployed
in production

44. - 45 -
Summary
• Spark
– System for related entity recommendations
• Knowledge base
• Extraction of signals from query logs and other user-generated
content
• Machine learned ranking
• Evaluation
• Other applications
– Recommendations on topic-entity pages

45. - 46 -
Future work
• New query types
– Queries with multiple entities
• adele skyfall
– Question-answering on keyword queries
• brad pitt movies
• brad pitt movies 2010
• Extending coverage
– Spark now live in CA, UK, AU, NZ, TW, HK, ES
• Even fresher data
– Stream processing of query log data
• Data quality improvements
• Online ranking with post-retrieval features

46. - 47 -
The End
• Many thanks to
– Barla Cambazoglu and Roi Blanco (Barcelona)
– Nicolas Torzec (US)
– Libby Lin (Product Manager, US)
– Search engineering (Taiwan)
• Contact
– pmika@yahoo-inc.com
– @pmika