1. A method comprising performing a machine-executed operation involving instructions for identifying a navigational query, wherein the machine-executed operation is at least one of: A) sending said instructions over transmission media; B) receiving said instructions over transmission media; C) storing said instructions onto a machine-readable storage medium; and D) executing the instructions; wherein said instructions are instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause performance of: determining whether a query is a navigational query by receiving a set of query-URL pair-wise features based at least in part on said query in conjunction with an associated query result set; integrating subsets of said set of query-URL pair-wise features to generate a set of query-based features; automatically selecting, from said set of query-based features, a subset of most effective features for identifying navigational queries, wherein said selecting is based on a machine learning feature selection method; based on said subset of most effective features, using a machine learning classification method to determine whether said query is a navigational query.