3. The method of claim 1 wherein generating a voice search confidence measure comprises: applying a maximum entropy model to the dialog feature, the speech recognition feature and the search feature to generate the voice search confidence measure.
1. A method of conducting a dialog with a user of a voice search system that includes a speech recognizer, a search component and a dialog manager, the method comprising: generating a dialog feature, with the dialog manager, indicative of how well the voice search system is responding to the user; recognizing a user speech input with the speech recognizer to generate a query and a speech recognition feature indicative of a measure of speech recognition accuracy; searching a data store, with the search component, for search results based on the query, and generating a search feature indicative of a measure of search accuracy; generating a voice search confidence measure, indicative of a confidence of the search results for the query, based on the dialog feature indicative of how well the voice search system is responding to the user, the speech recognition feature, and the search feature; and conducting the dialog by conducting dialog turns with the user, each dialog turn corresponding to an interaction with the user, and conducting the dialog according to a dialog strategy chosen based, at least in part, on the voice search confidence measure, the dialog strategy determining what type of dialog turn to next conduct with the user, the dialog feature being derived based on one or more of the dialog turns conducted with the user.