Inferring users' image-search goals with pseudo-images

The analysis of user search goals for a query can be very useful in improving search engine relevance and user experience. Although the research on inferring user goals or intents for text search has received much attention, little has been proposed for image search with visual information. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to capture user search goals in image search by exploring pseudo-images which are extracted by mining single sessions in user click-through logs to reflect user information needs. Moreover, we also propose a novel evaluation criterion to determine the number of user search goals for a query. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.