Using behavior data to quickly improve search ranking

A computer system for performing an online update process, the computer system comprising a processing unit coupled to a computer storage medium, the computer storage medium having stored thereon a plurality of computer software components executable by the processing unit, the computer software components comprising:

• a receiving component for receiving an update file, wherein the update file provides an indication that recent, significant user behavior has occurred with respect to one or more documents associated with an inverted index;
• a publishing component for publishing the update file to one or more in-memory index managers located on a plurality of index-serving devices, each of the plurality of index-serving devices comprising a filtering component for determining whether the respective index-serving device contains mapping data corresponding to the published update file,
• wherein each of the one or more in-memory index managers initiates an update process to a corresponding in-memory index,
• and wherein each corresponding in-memory index maintains a record of user behavior with respect to the one or more documents associated with the inverted index;
• and
• an index-file manager that serves a set of search query results in response to a user search query utilizing query results from the inverted index, wherein the set of search query results is ranked, at least in part, utilizing information from the in-memory index.

One or more computer storage media storing computer-useable instructions that, when used by one or more computing devices, cause the one or more computing devices to perform a method comprising:

• receiving a user search query;
• extracting primary search query results in response to the user search query from an inverted index, the inverted index located on a plurality of index serving devices, wherein the inverted index is updated by crawling a monitored set of documents within a predetermined scope of websites;
• determining that an in-memory index associated with the plurality of index serving devices contains recent updates to metadata underlying the content of one or more documents covered by the inverted index, wherein the in-memory index is updated by an update process comprising:
• receiving an update file that provides an indication that recent, significant user behavior has occurred with respect to the one or more documents associated with the inverted index;
• publishing the update file to in-memory index managers located on the plurality of index serving devices;
• for each update file published to the in-memory index managers, determining whether each index serving device of the plurality of index serving devices contains mapping data corresponding to the update file;
• for each index serving device containing mapping data corresponding to the update file, extracting from the update file a document identifier of the one or more documents associated with the user behavior;
• and
• utilizing the update file and the document identifier to update the in-memory index;
• ranking the primary search query results, at least in part, utilizing the in-memory index;
• and
• serving a set of ranked search query results responsive to the user search query.