AUTOMATIC QUERY ROUTING AND RANK CONFIGURATION FOR SEARCH QUERIES IN AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM
First Claim
1. A method for identifying documents most relevant to a query from a collection of documents that is organized based on a set of indices, said method comprising the steps of:
- a) determining a query class for the query, said query class associated with a routing function and a ranking function, said routing function capable of determining subsets of the collection that most likely include the most relevant documents, and said ranking function capable of sorting the documents in terms of relevancy;
b) identifying a set of indices most relevant to said query;
c) identifying a set of documents related to said query based on said determined indices, said identification performed via passing said ranking function associated with said determined query class along with said query to each search engine that manages a determined index from a collection of relevant indices;
d) collecting results ranked based upon said ranking function and merging and sorting said collected results by relevancy; and
e) returning a subset of the highest ranked documents as the documents most relevant to the query.
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Abstract
A query is received and parsed to generate a set of query terms. Statistical information is identified regarding each of the query terms and different permutations of the query terms. Additionally, lexical affinities associated with the permutations of query terms are identified. Next, the query is classified into a query category and a set of ranking parameters and routing information (associated with the query category) are identified. The query is then issued to a search engine by applying the identified ranking parameters and routing information, whereupon the search engine executes the query and forwards search results that can be accessed by an application using an API (e.g., the results can be viewed via a browser).
161 Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method for identifying documents most relevant to a query from a collection of documents that is organized based on a set of indices, said method comprising the steps of:
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a) determining a query class for the query, said query class associated with a routing function and a ranking function, said routing function capable of determining subsets of the collection that most likely include the most relevant documents, and said ranking function capable of sorting the documents in terms of relevancy;
b) identifying a set of indices most relevant to said query;
c) identifying a set of documents related to said query based on said determined indices, said identification performed via passing said ranking function associated with said determined query class along with said query to each search engine that manages a determined index from a collection of relevant indices;
d) collecting results ranked based upon said ranking function and merging and sorting said collected results by relevancy; and
e) returning a subset of the highest ranked documents as the documents most relevant to the query. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. An article of manufacture comprising a computer user medium having computer readable code embodied therein which identifies documents most relevant to a query from a collection of documents that is organized based on a set of indices, said medium comprising:
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a) computer readable program code determining a query class for the query, said query class associated with a routing function and a ranking function, said routing function capable of determining subsets of the collection that most likely include the most relevant documents, and said ranking function capable of sorting the documents in terms of relevancy;
b) computer readable program code determining indices most relevant to said query;
c) computer readable program code identifying a set of documents related to said query based on said determined indices, said identification performed via passing said ranking function associated with said determined query class along with said query to each search engine that manages a determined index from a collection of relevant indices;
d) computer readable program code collecting results ranked based upon said ranking function and merging and sorting said collected results by relevancy; and
e) computer readable program code returning a subset of the highest ranked documents as the documents most relevant to the query. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10, 11)
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12. A method for retrieving information comprising the steps of:
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a) receiving a query;
b) parsing said query and generating a set of query terms;
c) identifying statistical information regarding each of said query terms and different permutations of query terms;
d) identifying lexical affinities associated with said permutations of query terms;
e) classifying said query into a query category based upon results of steps c and d;
f) identifying a set of ranking parameters associated with said query category;
g) identifying routing information associated with said query category;
h) issuing a query to a search engine by applying said identified ranking parameters and said identified routing information; and
i) receiving and rendering search results from said search engine. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. An article of manufacture comprising a computer user medium having computer readable code embodied therein for retrieving information comprising the steps of:
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a) computer readable program code receiving a query;
b) computer readable program code parsing said query and generating a set of query terms;
c) computer readable program code identifying statistical information regarding each of said query terms and different permutations of query terms;
d) computer readable program code identifying lexical affinities associated with said permutations of query terms;
e) computer readable program code classifying said query into a query category based upon results of steps c and d;
f) computer readable program code identifying a set of ranking parameters associated with said query category;
g) computer readable program code identifying routing information associated with said query category;
h) computer readable program code issuing a query to a search engine by applying said identified ranking parameters and said identified routing information; and
i) computer readable program code receiving and rendering search results from said search engine.
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Specification