Search results are processed using search requests, including analyzing
received queries in order to provide a more sophisticated understanding
of the information being sought. A concept network is generated from a
set of queries by parsing the queries into units and defining various
relationships between the units. From these concept networks, queries can
be automatically categorized into categories, or more generally, can be
associated with one or more nodes of a taxonomy. The categorization can
be used to alter the search results or the presentation of the results to
the user. As an example of alterations of search results or presentation,
the presentation might include a list of "suggestions" for related search
query terms. As other examples, the corpus searched might vary depending
on the category or the ordering or selection of the results to present to
the user might vary depending on the category. Categorization might be
done using a learned set of query-node pairs where a pair maps a
particular query to a particular node in the taxonomy. The learned set
might be initialized from a manual indication of which queries go with
which nodes and enhanced has more searches are performed. One method of
enhancement involves tracking post-query click activity to identify how a
category estimate of a query might have varied from an actual category
for the query as evidenced by the category of the post-query click
activity, e.g., a particular hits of the search results that the user
selected following the query. Another method involved determining
relationships between units in the form of clusters and using clustering
to modify the query-node pairs.