Unsolved problems in search
W. Bruce Croft · 2008
Search applications have become ubiquitous and very successful. Major advances have been made in understanding how to deliver effective results very efficiently for a class of queries. As the range of applications broaden to include web search, desktop search, enterprise search, vertical search, social search, etc., the number of new research challenges has appeared to grow rather than shrink. Many of these challenges are variations on underlying themes and principles that information retrieval has focused on for more than 40 years. In this talk, several unsolved problems arising from new search applications will be discussed and some potential paths to solutions for these problems will be outlined.