Search engines aim to provide the most relevant results in response to queries but limitations can be seen on what is actually returned based on the queries used. Search queries can either be too specific or too general for search engines to recognize good results. Google has filed patent applications regarding alternative query terms or query refinements to offer a solution.
The Google Solution
Search queries that are not too effective in providing good results include homonyms which are words that have the same sound or spelling but different meanings. Improper contexts in the choice of words can also be very confusing especially to search engines. Very general terms provide results that are too broad while very narrow terms can be very restrictive and may provide non-responsive search results.
Google presents a system and method that attempts to address this particular problem. In this system, a stored query and a stored document are associated as a logical pairing. The pairing is assigned a weight thus when a search query is issued, a set of search documents is produced. There is at least one search document that matches at least one document. Retrieval...