Systems and methods for improving search quality
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A method comprising:
- receiving a query containing at least one query term;
performing at least one of;
(A) determining whether the query includes one or more compound query terms, and if so, automatically expanding the query to include one or more alternative representations of said one or more compound query terms;
(B) determining whether one or more query terms are included in a set of inflectional forms, and if so, automatically expanding the query to include one or more corresponding inflectional forms from the set of inflectional forms; and
(C) determining whether one or more query terms are included in a set of alternative spellings, and if so, automatically expanding the query to include one or more corresponding alternative spellings from the set of alternative spellings;
searching a database using the expanded query; and
returning results to a user.
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Abstract
Systems and methods are disclosed for improving search quality. Search queries are expanded using a variety of linguistic techniques. For example, the words in a query can be supplemented with related words obtained from a database of compound words, inflectional forms, and/or orthographic variations. The expanded queries can be used to perform searches for responsive documents. A document index can be expanded using similar techniques.
152 Citations
23 Claims
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1. A method comprising:
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receiving a query containing at least one query term;
performing at least one of;
(A) determining whether the query includes one or more compound query terms, and if so, automatically expanding the query to include one or more alternative representations of said one or more compound query terms;
(B) determining whether one or more query terms are included in a set of inflectional forms, and if so, automatically expanding the query to include one or more corresponding inflectional forms from the set of inflectional forms; and
(C) determining whether one or more query terms are included in a set of alternative spellings, and if so, automatically expanding the query to include one or more corresponding alternative spellings from the set of alternative spellings;
searching a database using the expanded query; and
returning results to a user. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A method comprising:
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identifying a set of terms associated with a document;
expanding the set of terms associated with the document by further associating with the document one or more of the following;
one or more alternative spellings of at least one term in the set of terms associated with the document;
one or more alternative representations of at least one compound term in the set of terms associated with the document; and
one or more additional inflectional forms of at least one term in the set of terms associated with the document;
indexing the document using the expanded set of terms. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13)
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14. A method comprising:
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searching a first set of documents for hyphenated words;
searching the first set of documents for non-hyphenated words that correspond to said hyphenated words; and
generating a set of associations between said hyphenated words and said corresponding non-hyphenated words. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. A computer program package embodied on a computer readable medium, the computer program package including instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform an action selected from the group consisting of:
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expanding a query received from a user by including one or more alternative spellings of at least one query term;
expanding the query with one or more alternative representations of at least one compound query term; and
expanding the query with one or more inflectional forms of at least one query term. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21)
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22. An information retrieval system, the system comprising:
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a document database, the document database containing a group of documents; and
query processing logic operable to receive a query, expand the query using one or more linguistic techniques, and search documents in the document database for information responsive to the query. - View Dependent Claims (23)
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Specification