Microsoft Research in partnership with Bing have decided to launch the Speller Challenge. They will offer Prizes for the best Search Engine Spelling Alteration Services.
Spelling Alteration is a popular search technique used to translate apparent typographical errors, alternative spellings, and synonyms into an improved query that returns the best possible results on the first try.
But this approach is not without its pitfalls. You might enter a word correctly that’s not widely used but has a neighbor in the dictionary that’s much more popular on the Internet. One person’s spelling error could be another’s perfect query. Which results should the search engine provide, and how should any useful alternative searches be represented?
That’s the task being offered to researchers and students around the world in the Speller Challenge, presented by Microsoft Research in partnership with Bing. The goal is to develop a spelling alteration system suitable for large-scale statistical data mining-based web search
The top five competitors will receive the following prizes:
- First place US$10,000
- Second place US$8,000
- Third place US$6,000
- Fourth place US$4,000
- Fifth place US$2,000
So if you have what it takes to build the best speller, enter the Speller Challenge by developing a speller that generates the most plausible spelling alternatives for a search query.
