Retrieving Content Objects Through Real-time Query-Post Association Analysis on Online Social Networks

One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying software that is operable when executed to:

• receive, from a client system associated with a first user of an online social network, a search query comprising a character string;
• parse the search query to identify one or more n-grams;
• access a real-time query-post log comprising a plurality of entries corresponding to a plurality of terms extracted from a plurality of prior queries over a recent time window, wherein each entry in the query-post log comprises:
• (1) a query term, and (2) a related term extracted from a content object of the online social network matching the prior query from which the query term was extracted, the content object having been accessed responsive to the prior query;
• identify a plurality of content objects associated with the online social network that match the search query, each content object comprising one or more terms;
• rank the identified content objects based on correlation coefficients for the terms of the content object with respect to each of the n-grams of the search query, wherein the correlation coefficient for each term of the content object is based on a count of entries in the query-post log comprising a related term matching the term of the content object and a query term matching the respective n-gram of the search query;
• and
• send, to the client system, instructions for presenting one or more search results corresponding to one or more of the identified content objects, respectively, wherein the search results are presented in an order based on the ranking of the corresponding content objects.

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and a non-transitory memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to:
• receive, from a client system associated with a first user of an online social network, a search query comprising a character string;
• parse the search query to identify one or more n-grams;
• access a real-time query-post log comprising a plurality of entries corresponding to a plurality of terms extracted from a plurality of prior queries over a recent time window, wherein each entry in the query-post log comprises:
• (1) a query term, and (2) a related term extracted from a content object of the online social network matching the prior query from which the query term was extracted, the content object having been accessed responsive to the prior query;
• identify a plurality of content objects associated with the online social network that match the search query, each content object comprising one or more terms;
• rank the identified content objects based on correlation coefficients for the terms of the content object with respect to each of the n-grams of the search query, wherein the correlation coefficient for each term of the content object is based on a count of entries in the query-post log comprising a related term matching the term of the content object and a query term matching the respective n-gram of the search query;
• and
• send, to the client system, instructions for presenting one or more search results corresponding to one or more of the identified content objects, respectively, wherein the search results are presented in an order based on the ranking of the corresponding content objects.