SCORING CANDIDATE ANSWER PASSAGES

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for scoring candidate answer passages. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a query determined to be a question query that seeks an answer response and data identifying resources determined to be responsive to the query; for a subset of the resources: receiving candidate answer passages; determining, for each candidate answer passage, a query term match score that is a measure of similarity of the query terms to the candidate answer passage; determining, for each candidate answer passage, an answer term match score that is a measure of similarity of answer terms to the candidate answer passage; determining, for each candidate answer passage, a query dependent score based on the query term match score and the answer term match score; and generating an answer score that is a based on the query dependent score.