Ambiguous Query Expansion

The Problem

Short or ambiguous queries get expanded incorrectly, leading to irrelevant retrievals or missing the user's actual intent.

Symptoms

• ❌ Query "API" retrieves too broadly

• ❌ Ambiguous term interpreted wrong

• ❌ Over-expansion adds noise

• ❌ Cannot disambiguate intent

• ❌ Retrieves multiple unrelated topics

Real-World Example

Query: "Python"

Could mean:
→ Python programming language (tech docs)
→ Python the snake (if you have wildlife content)
→ Monty Python (if you have entertainment content)

Retrieval returns:
→ Mix of all interpretations
→ Mostly irrelevant for user's actual intent
→ AI confused by mixed context

---

Deep Technical Analysis

Ambiguity Types

Polysemy:

"Bank":
→ Financial institution
→ River bank

"Spring":
→ Season
→ Coiled metal
→ Spring framework (Java)

Without context, cannot determine intent

Short Queries:

"API" - Too generic
Could be:
→ REST API
→ GraphQL API
→ Specific API endpoint docs
→ API authentication
→ API pricing

Retrieves everything, too broad

Contextual Disambiguation

Conversation History:

Turn 1: "Tell me about authentication"
Turn 2: "What about API?"

"API" in context of "authentication":
→ Likely means API authentication
→ Not API pricing or design

Use conversation to narrow intent

User Profile/Role:

User: Developer (role metadata)
Query: "deployment"

Interpret as:
→ Code deployment (technical)

vs

User: Marketing
Query: "deployment"

Interpret as:
→ Feature rollout (business)

Role-based disambiguation

Query Clarification

Ask Back:

Query: "API" (ambiguous)

AI: "I found information about API authentication, API endpoints,
and API rate limits. Which would you like to know about?"

User clarifies → precise retrieval

Suggest Intent:

Query: "Configure Python"

AI detects ambiguity, suggests:
→ "Did you mean: Configure Python for development?"
→ Or: "Configure Python SDK for our API?"

User selects → proceed with clear intent

Controlled Expansion

Domain-Specific Expansion:

General expansion (bad):
"API" → [api, application programming interface, endpoint, service, ...]

Domain-specific (better):
"API" in tech docs → [REST API, GraphQL, API authentication, API key, rate limit]

Controlled vocabulary based on domain

Relevance Feedback:

Initial retrieval:
→ Retrieve diverse results
→ Show to user (quick preview)
→ User clicks relevant ones
→ Re-retrieve with refined query

Interactive disambiguation

---

How to Solve

Use conversation context to disambiguate queries + implement query clarification (ask user to specify) + apply role/domain-based interpretation + controlled vocabulary expansion (domain-specific) + require minimum query length (e.g., 3+ words) + use intent classification before retrieval + implement relevance feedback loop. See Ambiguous Queries.