23. A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium on which are stored instructions executable on a computer processor, the instructions including: receiving an original query; identifying a first compound comprising a first sequence of one or more terms in the original query; identifying a second compound comprising a second different sequence of one or more terms, wherein the second compound is an expansion or a contraction of the first compound; generating an alternative query by substituting the first compound in the original query with the second compound identified as an expansion or a contraction of the first compound; computing a score for the alternative query based at least in part on a relevance between the alternative query and a history of one or more previously received queries; and identifying the alternative query as a query suggestion for the original query based at least in part on the computed score for the alternative query.
23. A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium on which are stored instructions executable on a computer processor, the instructions including: receiving an original query; identifying a first compound comprising a first sequence of one or more terms in the original query; identifying a second compound comprising a second different sequence of one or more terms, wherein the second compound is an expansion or a contraction of the first compound; generating an alternative query by substituting the first compound in the original query with the second compound identified as an expansion or a contraction of the first compound; computing a score for the alternative query based at least in part on a relevance between the alternative query and a history of one or more previously received queries; and identifying the alternative query as a query suggestion for the original query based at least in part on the computed score for the alternative query. 27. The computer program product of claim 23 , wherein the first compound and the second compound are stored in an expansion/contraction table generated from at least one of a user input log and a user input database, and wherein the expansion/contraction table includes frequency values representing occurrences of sequences of words.