Classifying search engine queries using the web as background knowledge

The performance of search engines crucially depends on their ability to capture the meaning of a query most likely intended by the user. We study the problem of mapping a search engine query to those nodes of a given subject taxonomy that characterize its most likely meanings. We describe the architecture of a classification system that uses a web directory to identify the subject context that the query terms are frequently used in. Based on its performance on the classification of 800,000 example queries recorded from MSN search, the system received the Runner-Up Award for Query Categorization Performance of the KDD Cup 2005.