IP Library › Granted Patent US 12,579,133
Granted Patent B2
US 12,579,133 · App. 18/196,913 · Granted Mar 17, 2026

Generating query variants using a trained generative model

Inventors: Jyrki Alakuijala (Wollerau, CH); Christian Buck (Kilchberg, CH); Jannis Bulian (Zurich, CH); Massimiliano Ciaramita (Zurich, CH); Wojciech Gajewski (Freienbach, CH); Andrea Gesmundo (Zurich, CH); Neil Houlsby (Zurich, CH); Wei Wang (Sunnyvale, CA)
Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
G06F16/242G06F16/3338G06N3/047G06N3/08G06N3/044
View Patent ↗
Loading inventors, assignments & file history…
Monitor This Case
Get email alerts when status or documents change.
Order Certified Copies
Most orders are placed with the USPTO same day — all within 24 business hours.
Order via The Patent Place →
Pre-filled with this patent's details
Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,579,133
App. No.
18/196,913
Granted
Mar 17, 2026
Kind
B2
Abstract

Systems, methods, and computer readable media related to generating query variants for a submitted query. In many implementations, the query variants are generated utilizing a generative model. A generative model is productive, in that it can be utilized to actively generate a variant of a query based on application of tokens of the query to the generative model, and optionally based on application of additional input features to the generative model.

Claims (83)

1 . A method implemented by one or more processors, the method comprising:

receiving an original query, the original query generated based on user interface input of a user via a client device;

obtaining, from a search system, one or more search system responses to the original query;

applying, to a trained generative model:

one or more attributes of the user that are determined based on one or more query submissions received prior to the receiving of the original query,

the original query, and

the one or more search system responses to the original query;

generating, based on application of the original query, application of the one or more search system responses, and application of the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model, generative output;

subsequent to generating the generative output:

generating, based on application of further input to the trained generative model, further generative output,

wherein the further input is based on the generative output;

generating an output based on the further generative output; and

providing, in response to the original query, the output for presentation via the client device.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more attributes of the user, applied to the trained generative model, comprise:

a location of the user,

a task currently engaged in by the user, and/or

weather at the location of the user.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

applying, along with the original query, the one or more search system responses, and the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model:

content recently viewed by the user at the client device;

wherein generating the generative output is further based on application of the content to the trained generative model.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

selecting the trained generative model from a plurality of candidate generative models;

wherein applying the original query, the one or more search system responses, and the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model is in response to selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models.

5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models is based on the one or more user attributes of the user that generated the original query.

6 . The method of claim 4 , wherein selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models is based on a task currently engaged in by the user.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the further input includes the generative output.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the further input includes further search system responses that are responsive to the generative output.

9 . A system comprising:

one or more storage devices storing instructions; and

one or more processors operable to execute the instructions to:

receive an original query, the original query generated based on user interface input of a user via a client device;

obtain, from a search system, one or more search system responses to the original query;

apply, to a trained generative model:

one or more attributes of the user that are determined based on one or more query submissions received prior to the receiving of the original query,

the original query, and

the one or more search system responses to the original query;

generate, based on application of the original query, application of the one or more search system responses, and application of the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model, generative output;

subsequent to generating the generative output:

generate, based on application of further input to the trained generative model, further generative output,

wherein the further input is based on the generative output;

generate an output based on the further generative output; and

provide, in response to the original query, the output for presentation via the client device.

10 . The system of claim 9 , wherein the one or more attributes of the user, applied to the trained generative model, comprise:

a location of the user,

a task currently engaged in by the user, and/or

weather at the location of the user.

11 . The system of claim 9 , wherein at least a processor of the one or more processors is further operable to execute the instructions to:

apply, along with the original query, the one or more search system responses, and the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model:

content recently viewed by the user at the client device;

wherein generating the generative output is further based on application of the content to the trained generative model.

12 . The system of claim 9 , wherein at least a processor of the one or more processors is further operable to execute the instructions to:

select the trained generative model from a plurality of candidate generative models;

wherein applying the original query, the one or more search system responses, and the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model is in response to selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models.

13 . The system of claim 12 , wherein selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models is based on the one or more user attributes of the user that generated the original query.

14 . The system of claim 12 , wherein selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models is based on a task currently engaged in by the user.

15 . A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing software comprising instructions executable by one or more processors to:

receive an original query, the original query generated based on user interface input of a user via a client device;

obtain, from a search system, one or more search system responses to the original query;

apply, to a trained generative model:

one or more attributes of the user that are determined based on one or more query submissions received prior to the receiving of the original query,

the original query, and

the one or more search system responses to the original query;

generate, based on application of the original query, application of the one or more search system responses, and application of the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model, generative output;

subsequent to generating the generative output:

generate, based on application of further input to the trained generative model, further generative output,

wherein the further input is based on the generative output;

generate an output based on the further generative output; and

provide, in response to the original query, the output for presentation via the client device.

16 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein the one or more attributes of the user comprise:

a location of the user,

a task currently engaged in by the user, and/or

weather at the location of the user;

wherein generating the generative output is further based on application of the location, the task, and/or the weather to the trained generative model.

17 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein the instructions are further executable by at least a processor of the one or more processors to:

apply, along with the original query and the one or more search system responses, and the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model:

content recently viewed by the user at the client device;

wherein generating the generative output is further based on application of the content to the trained generative model.

18 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein the instructions are further executable by at least a processor of the one or more processors to:

select the trained generative model from a plurality of candidate generative models;

wherein applying the original query, the one or more search system responses, and the one or more attributes of the user, to the trained generative model is in response to selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models.

19 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 18 , wherein selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models is based on the one or more user attributes of the user that generated the original query.

20 . The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 18 , wherein selecting the trained generative model from the plurality of candidate generative models is based on a task currently engaged in by the user.

Assignments (2)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded May 15, 2023
From: ALAKUIJALA, JYRKI; BUCK, CHRISTIAN; BULIAN, JANNIS; CIARAMITA, MASSIMILIANO; GAJEWSKI, WOJCIECH; GESMUNDO, ANDREA; HOULSBY, NEIL; WANG, WEI
To: GOOGLE INC.
Reel/Frame 063646/0651 →
CHANGE OF NAME Recorded May 15, 2023
From: GOOGLE INC.
To: GOOGLE LLC
Reel/Frame 063649/0221 →
Continuity (3)
Continuation 16609318
Provisional Application 62492154 · Apr 29, 2017
Related Publication 20230281193A1 · Sep 7, 2023
References Cited (95)
US 6947930B2 · Anick · 2005 [cited by examiner]
US 7089226B1 · Dumais · 2006 [cited by examiner]
US 7984004B2 · Andrew · 2011 [cited by examiner]
US 8326861B1 · Ainslie · 2012 [cited by applicant]
US 8577862B2 · Petschulat · 2013 [cited by examiner]
US 8583675B1 · Haahr · 2013 [cited by examiner]
US 8626681B1 · Jurca et al. · 2014 [cited by applicant]
US 8762374B1 · Chen et al. · 2014 [cited by applicant]
US 9110975B1 · Diligenti · 2015 [cited by examiner]
US 9141916B1 · Corrado et al. · 2015 [cited by applicant]
US 9589071B2 · Li · 2017 [cited by examiner]
US 9697249B1 · Bailey · 2017 [cited by applicant]
US 10055500B2 · Bolshinsky · 2018 [cited by applicant]
US 10726083B2 · Annau · 2020 [cited by examiner]
US 10769547B2 · Yi et al. · 2020 [cited by applicant]
US 11194872B2 · Annau · 2021 [cited by examiner]
US 20050010553A1 · Liu · 2005 [cited by examiner]
US 20060074883A1 · Teevan · 2006 [cited by examiner]
US 20070011154A1 · Musgrove · 2007 [cited by applicant]
US 20080005069A1 · Payne · 2008 [cited by applicant]
US 20080140699A1 · Jones et al. · 2008 [cited by applicant]
US 20080147637A1 · Li · 2008 [cited by examiner]
US 20080222132A1 · Pan · 2008 [cited by examiner]
US 20090171907A1 · Radovanovic · 2009 [cited by examiner]
US 20090187515A1 · Andrew et al. · 2009 [cited by applicant]
US 20100023495A1 · Gupta · 2010 [cited by applicant]
US 20100281012A1 · Imig · 2010 [cited by examiner]
US 20110161305A1 · Safadi · 2011 [cited by examiner]
US 20110208730A1 · Jiang · 2011 [cited by examiner]
US 20120131031A1 · Xie et al. · 2012 [cited by applicant]
US 20120191745A1 · Velipasaoglu et al. · 2012 [cited by applicant]
US 20120233140A1 · Collins-Thompson · 2012 [cited by examiner]
US 20120239382A1 · Shen · 2012 [cited by examiner]
US 20120269116A1 · Xing et al. · 2012 [cited by applicant]
US 20130226935A1 · Bai · 2013 [cited by applicant]
US 20130238587A1 · Annau et al. · 2013 [cited by applicant]
US 20130282716A1 · Michel · 2013 [cited by examiner]
US 20130346400A1 · Ramsey et al. · 2013 [cited by applicant]
US 20140272909A1 · Isensee · 2014 [cited by examiner]
US 20140280107A1 · Heymans et al. · 2014 [cited by applicant]
US 20150032443A1 · Karov et al. · 2015 [cited by applicant]
US 20150186474A1 · Angel · 2015 [cited by examiner]
US 20150293976A1 · Guo · 2015 [cited by examiner]
US 20150317317A1 · Deng et al. · 2015 [cited by applicant]
US 20160019270A1 · Jones · 2016 [cited by examiner]
US 20160078101A1 · Somaiya · 2016 [cited by examiner]
US 20160188726A1 · Shang et al. · 2016 [cited by applicant]
US 20160224574A1 · Horvitz · 2016 [cited by examiner]
US 20160239576A1 · Annau · 2016 [cited by applicant]
US 20170098012A1 · Zhu et al. · 2017 [cited by applicant]
US 20170178048A1 · Ghotbi et al. · 2017 [cited by applicant]
US 20170193057A1 · Yi · 2017 [cited by examiner]
US 20170300530A1 · Tang · 2017 [cited by examiner]
US 20180025089A1 · Chin · 2018 [cited by examiner]
US 20180052915A1 · Cohn · 2018 [cited by examiner]
US 20180144047A1 · Beller · 2018 [cited by examiner]
US 20180293313A1 · Hauptmann · 2018 [cited by examiner]
US 20190278812A1 · Otsuka et al. · 2019 [cited by applicant]
US 20200142888A1 · Alakuijala et al. · 2020 [cited by applicant]
CN 1670723A · 2005 [cited by examiner]
CN 1758248 · 2006 [cited by applicant]
CN 102521335 · 2012 [cited by applicant]
CN 105264528 · 2016 [cited by applicant]
CN 106471497 · 2017 [cited by applicant]
KR 20080072673 · 2008 [cited by applicant]
KR 20170043582 · 2017 [cited by applicant]
WO 2007005431 · 2007 [cited by applicant]
WO WO2007005431A1 · 2007 [cited by examiner]
WO 2018097091 · 2019 [cited by applicant]
Guo et al., “A Unified and Discriminative Model for Query Refinement”, Proceedings of the 31st Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Jul. 2008, pp. 379-386. (Yea… [cited by examiner]
Islam et al., “On Modeling Query Refinement by Capturing User Intent through Feedback”, Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Australasian Database Conference (ADC 2012), Melbourne, Australia, 2012, pp. 11-20. (Year: 2012). [cited by examiner]
Maeda Y., “The Optimal Algorithm for Query Refinement in Information Retrieval”, 1999 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1999, vol. 5, pp. 522-526. (Year: 1999). [cited by examiner]
Carpineto et al., “A Survey of Automatic Query Expansion in Information Retrieval”, ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 44, No. 1, Article 1, Jan. 2012, 50 pages. (Year: 2012). [cited by examiner]
China National Intellectual Property Administration; Notification of First Office Action issued in Application No. 201880028212.7; 29 pages; dated Dec. 1, 2022. [cited by applicant]
Otsuka, A. et al.; A Proposal of a Document Retrieval Method for Prefetching Answers; 19 pages; dated Mar. 31, 2017. [cited by applicant]
European Patent Office; Preliminary Opinion issued in Application No. 18724709.3, 19 pages, dated Sep. 30, 2022. [cited by applicant]
European Patent Office; Summons to attend oral proceedings pursuant to Rule 115(1) EPC issued in Application No. 18724709.3; 14 pages; dated Oct. 15, 2021. [cited by applicant]
Korean Patent Office; Notice of Allowance issue in Application No. 1020197035500; 4 pages; dated Jul. 16, 2021. [cited by applicant]
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation; DEIM Forum; https://db-event.jpn.org/deim2017/papers/328.pdf; dated Mar. 31, 2017. [cited by applicant]
Japanese Patent Office; Notice of Allowance issue in Application No. 2019-558737; 3 pages; dated May 24, 2021. [cited by applicant]
Intellectual Property India; Office Action issued in Application No. 201927044115; 8 pages; dated Apr. 12, 2021. [cited by applicant]
Korean Patent Office; Office Action issue in Application No. 1020197035500; 14 pages; dated Jan. 28, 2021. [cited by applicant]
Sordoni, Alessandro et al., A Hierarchical Recurrent Encoder-Decoder for Generative Context-Aware Query Suggestion; pp. 1-10; dated Jul. 8, 2015. [cited by applicant]
Japanese Patent Office; Notice of Office Action issue in Application No. 2019-558737; 15 pages; dated Dec. 14, 2020. [cited by applicant]
European Patent Office; Communication Pursuant to Article 94(3) EPC issue in Application No. 18724709.3; 12 pages; dated Oct. 28, 2020. [cited by applicant]
Magioladitis et al., “Collaborative Filtering,” Wikipedia—the free encyclopedia, retrieved from internet URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collaborative_filtering&oldid=775211543 [retrieved on Jul. 4, 2018]… [cited by applicant]
Isingness et al., “Deep Learning,” Wikipedia—the free encyclopedia, Apr. 21, 2017, retrieved from the internet: URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Deep_learning&oldid=776543240#Deep_neural_network_architect… [cited by applicant]
Written Opinion and International Search Report for Application PCT/US2018/029834 dated Jul. 16, 2018. [cited by applicant]
Ciaramita, M. et al. “Using Machine Translation Query Rewrite Generation”; Technical Disclosure Commons; http://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/92; 9 pages; Jan. 6, 2016. [cited by applicant]
Nogueira, R. et al. “Task-Oriented Query Reformulation with Reinforcement Learning”; Cornell University; arXiv.org; arXiv:1704.04572v1; 9 pages; Apr. 15, 2017. [cited by applicant]
Jones et al.; Generating Query Substitutions; Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on World Wide Web; dated May 2006. [cited by applicant]
Atsushi Otsuka et al., Proposal of document retrieval method to look ahead to answers, 9th Forum on Data Engineering and Information Management; pp. 108; URL: http://dbevent.jpn.org/deim2017/papers/328.pdf; dated Mar. 3… [cited by applicant]
China National Intellectual Property Administration; Grant Notice issued in Application No. 201880028212.7; 4 pages; dated Jul. 1, 2023. [cited by applicant]
Intellectual Property India; Hearing Notice issued in Application No. 201927044115; 2 pages; dated Feb. 16, 2024. [cited by applicant]
China National Intellectual Property Administration; Notice of First Office Action issued in Application No. 2023112095726, 38 pages, dated Sep. 13, 2025. [cited by applicant]