Search and information retrieval

Information retrieval (IR) is a pivotal component in various applications. Recent advances in machine learning (ML) have enabled the integration of ML algorithms into IR, particularly in ranking systems. While there is a plethora of research on the robustness of ML-based ranking systems, these studies largely neglect commercial e-commerce systems and fail to establish a connection between real-world and

Applications of large-scale knowledge graphs (KG) in the e-commerce platforms can improve shopping experience for their customers. While existing e-commerce KGs integrate a large volume of concepts or product attributes, they fail to discover user intentions, leaving the gap with how people think, behave, and interact with surrounding world. In this work, we present COSMO, a scalable system to mine user-centric

We investigate the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into query encoders to improve dense retrieval without increasing latency and cost, by circumventing the dependency on LLMs at inference time. SoftQE incorporates knowledge from LLMs by mapping embeddings of input queries to those of the LLM-expanded queries. While improvements over various strong baselines on in-domain MS-MARCO metrics are

Product returns are an increasing environmental problem, as an estimated 25% of returned products end up as landfill [10]. Returns are expensive for retailers as well, and it is estimated that 15-40% of all online purchases are returned [34]. The problem could be mitigated by identifying issues with a product that are likely to lead to its return, before many have sold. Understanding and predicting return

To help customers who are still in the exploration phase, Web search engines and e-commerce websites often provide relevant Q&As in widgets, such as ‘People Also Ask’ and ‘Customers Also Ask Alexa’, with additional information. In this work, we propose to enrich this customer experience by rendering related products under each Q&A based on an automated online query recommendation. We define what are the