Patent ID: 7849080

Claim:
A method for generating query suggestions by integrating valuable query suggestions with experimental query suggestions using a network of users and advertisers, the method comprising: identifying a plurality of query suggestions in a historical dataset, the historical dataset comprising queries searched for by users and advertisements selected by the users after searching for the queries, wherein the query suggestions comprise queries identified as having some relevancy to the queries searched for by the users; generating, from the historical dataset, a data describing a network comprising a plurality of query items representing queries linked to a plurality of advertisement items representing advertisements; calculating a query suggestion value for each query suggestion in the plurality of query suggestions using the data describing the network, wherein the query suggestion value of each query suggestion is based on a number of advertisements attributable to each query suggestion which are selected by the users; ranking the plurality of query suggestions, in descending order, based on the query suggestion value of each query suggestion; generating a query exploit set and a query explore set, wherein the query exploit set comprises the top N ranked query suggestions and the query explore set comprises the remainder of the query suggestions, further wherein N comprises any integer; and suggesting, by a processor, the query suggestions in the exploit set and the explore set, wherein the query suggestions in the exploit set are suggested more frequently than the query suggestions in the explore set.