Transformer-based Language Models for Semantic Search and Mobile Applications Retrieval

João Coelho, João Coelho, António Neto, António Neto, Miguel Tavares, Miguel Tavares, Carlos Coutinho, Carlos Coutinho, Carlos Coutinho, João Oliveira, João Oliveira, João Oliveira, Ricardo Ribeiro, Ricardo Ribeiro, Fernando Batista, Fernando Batista

2021

Abstract

Search engines are being extensively used by Mobile App Stores, where millions of users world-wide use them every day. However, some stores still resort to simple lexical-based search engines, despite the recent advances in Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, and Natural Language Processing, which allow for richer semantic strategies. This work proposes an approach for semantic search of mobile applications that relies on transformer-based language models, fine-tuned with the existing textual information about known mobile applications. Our approach relies solely on the application name and on the unstructured textual information contained in its description. A dataset of about 500 thousand mobile apps was extended in the scope of this work with a test set, and all the available textual data was used to fine-tune our neural language models. We have evaluated our models using a public dataset that includes information about 43 thousand applications, and 56 manually annotated non-exact queries. The results show that our model surpasses the performance of all the other retrieval strategies reported in the literature. Tests with users have confirmed the performance of our semantic search approach, when compared with an existing deployed solution.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Coelho J., Neto A., Tavares M., Coutinho C., Oliveira J., Ribeiro R. and Batista F. (2021). Transformer-based Language Models for Semantic Search and Mobile Applications Retrieval. In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2021) - Volume 1: KDIR; ISBN 978-989-758-533-3, SciTePress, pages 225-232. DOI: 10.5220/0010657300003064

in Bibtex Style

@conference{kdir21,
author={João Coelho and António Neto and Miguel Tavares and Carlos Coutinho and João Oliveira and Ricardo Ribeiro and Fernando Batista},
title={Transformer-based Language Models for Semantic Search and Mobile Applications Retrieval},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2021) - Volume 1: KDIR},
year={2021},
pages={225-232},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010657300003064},
isbn={978-989-758-533-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2021) - Volume 1: KDIR
TI - Transformer-based Language Models for Semantic Search and Mobile Applications Retrieval
SN - 978-989-758-533-3
AU - Coelho J.
AU - Neto A.
AU - Tavares M.
AU - Coutinho C.
AU - Oliveira J.
AU - Ribeiro R.
AU - Batista F.
PY - 2021
SP - 225
EP - 232
DO - 10.5220/0010657300003064
PB - SciTePress