Disambiguating unrecognized abbreviations in search queries using machine learning

Methods and apparatuses are described for disambiguating unrecognized abbreviations in search queries using machine learning. A server computing device detects unrecognized abbreviations in an initial search query received from a user of a client computing device. The server generates candidate words for each of the unrecognized abbreviations in the initial search query. For each of the abbreviations, the server executes a trained disambiguation machine learning model using the candidate words as input to generate, for each candidate word, a probability that the candidate word is intended by the user to be an expansion of the unrecognized abbreviation. The server selects one of the candidate words as a replacement word for the unrecognized abbreviation. The server generates a new search query by replacing each of the unrecognized abbreviations in the initial search query with the corresponding replacement word and retrieves search results by executing a search using the new search query.