REDMOND, WA – Research papers presented by Microsoft Corp. at the 2006 Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) conference show that the software giant has been working hard behind the scenes to tackle the issue of internet search, as well as looking for ways to improve its search technology to give it a potential leg up on its rival, Google.Thirteen papers are to be presented by Microsoft at this week’s SIGIR conference in Seattle, representing almost 20-percent of the 74 total papers accepted for this year’s SIGIR.

One of the research papers submitted for SIGIR, “Improving Web Search Ranking by Incorporating User Behavior,” addresses the possibility of using “discovered patterns of user behavior to improve algorithms that rank search engine results,” according to Microsoft.

“This work is significant because it demonstrates how to add a new rich set of user behavior features into ranking for large relevance gains,” Microsoft stated in a company press release.

“Most search engines today use a somewhat two-dimensional approach, matching user queries with the content and link structure of Web pages to return a list of results,” said Eugene Agichtein, a researcher for the Text Mining, Search and Navigation Group within Microsoft Research. “We’re looking at how to add a third dimension – the users themselves – to improve the search experience.”

Agichtein added that by examining click-through and browsing patterns across a large number of web users, “we are able to learn a great deal about how people interact with search technologies and can thereby improve our accuracy dramatically.”

Other Microsoft research papers published this year include “A Study of Statistical Models for Query Translation: Finding a Good Unit of Translation,” “Thread Detection in Dynamic Text Message Streams,” and a paper concerning the methodology of ranking search response accuracy entitled “On Ranking the Effectiveness of Searches.”

Ten of the 13 papers submitted by Microsoft were co-authored by academic researchers from major universities, including researches from the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Columbia University and University College London.

Microsoft has long been a contributor to and participant in SIGIR and the company’s 2006 papers have received a warm welcome from the conference’s organizers and executives.

“Microsoft’s involvement in the SIGIR and the search communities is extensive,” said Efthimis Efthimiadis, chairman of this year’s SIGIR conference. “In addition to openly publishing research papers in increasing numbers year after year, Microsoft researchers can be found serving on executive boards, chairing committees, reviewing papers and presenting keynote addresses at conferences. I believe the work Microsoft Research is doing is advancing the field of search, and it will improve the online experience for all users.”

A list of papers authored by Microsoft Research, and links to many such publications, is available at the following URL: http://research.microsoft.com/news/featurestories/source/sigirpapers2006.aspx