Microsoft Corporation
Embedding user categories using graphs for enhancing searches based on similarities

Abstract:

Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for embedding user categories into vectors that capture similarities between the user categories. One method includes an operation for building a graph for a category of attributes for users of a social network, the graph including a vertex for each category value. Connections, built between the graph vertices, have a connection value indicating the number of users to which the category values associated with the vertices have been assigned. Further, a first vector for each category value is obtained based on the graph, where a distance between two category values is a function of the connection value between the corresponding vertices. A user vector, based on the first vectors of the category values, is assigned to each user. A search is performed for a given user based on the user vectors, and results are presented to the given user.