Semantic Expansion of Geographic Web Queries Based on Natural Language Positioning Expressions

TLDR

Web search tools are increasingly needed, as about 20 % of queries contain geographic references, making semantic understanding of such queries essential. The study explores using natural language positioning expressions to perform geographic Web searches without geocoded data or gazetteers. Positioning expressions indicate a subject’s location relative to a landmark, enabling a query‑expansion technique usable by any keyword‑based search engine. Experiments demonstrate that the query‑expansion technique improves expressiveness over traditional keyword searches and offers a path for many common geographic queries.

Abstract

Abstract The need for better Web search tools is getting increasing attention nowadays. About 20% of the queries currently submitted to search engines include geographic references. Thus, it is particularly important to work with the semantics of such queries, both by understanding the terminology and by recognizing geographic references in natural language text. In this paper, we explore the use of natural language expressions, which we call positioning expressions , to perform geographic searches on the Web, without resorting to geocoded data or gazetteers. Such positioning expressions denote the location of a subject of interest with respect to a landmark. Our approach leads to a query expansion technique that can be explored by virtually any keyword‐based search engine. Results obtained in our experiments show an expressive improvement over the traditional keyword‐based search and a potential path for tackling many kinds of common geographic queries.