Method and apparatus for intranet searching

• US 20060085447A1
• Filed: 11/12/2004
• Published: 04/20/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: D'Urso, Mark S.
• Granted Patent: US 7,779,012 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

A method for processing an intranet includes crawling the intranet to identify at least some of the pages in the intranet, and determining, for each identified page, a number of links in a shortest path from a root page to the identified page.

Claims

1-17. -17. (canceled)

18. A method for parsing at least one page of an intranet comprising a plurality of pages, the at least one page comprising a plurality of terms arranged in a hierarchical structure, the method comprising acts of:

(A) parsing the at least one page to identify at least one of the plurality of terms; and

(B) determining, for each identified term, a location of each identified term within the hierarchical structure of the page.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising an act (C) of storing information, for each identified term, indicating the location of the identified term within the hierarchical structure of the page.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the hierarchical structure comprises a plurality of levels comprising at least one root level, and wherein the act (B) comprises determining the location by determining a number of levels in a shortest path from a level of the at least one root level to a level of the identified term.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the at least one page is arranged according to HTML.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the at least one root is associated with an HTML root tag.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein the levels in the hierarchical structure of the at least one page are associated with levels of nodes in the HTML structure of the page.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the levels of nodes in the HTML structure are associated, at least in part, with formatting characteristics.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the formatting characteristics comprise at least one tag type selected from the group of tag types comprising a distinguishing font, a distinguishing color, a hypertext link, a title, a coding tag, and a meta tag.

26. The method of claim 25, further comprising an act (C) of determining a subject matter specificity level for the identified term in association, at least in part, with a specificity weight factor of a tag type associated with the identified term.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein the specificity weight factor of the tag type is based, at least in part, on a frequency of the tag type in the intranet.

28. The method of claim 18, further comprising an act (C) of determining a subject matter specificity level for the identified term in association at least in part with the location of the identified term in the hierarchical structure of the page.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein the subject matter specificity level has a greater degree of specificity in association with an identified term located deeper in the hierarchical structure than for an identified term located higher in the hierarchical structure.

30. The method of claim 28, wherein the identified term has more than one instance in the at least one page, and the act (C) comprises determining the subject matter specificity level for the identified term in association at least in part with all locations of the more than one instance of the identified term.

32. The method of claim 28, wherein the subject matter specificity level has a greater valve for an identified term having a greater distance from a root level of the hierarchical structure than a value for an identified term having a relatively shorter distance from the root level.

33. The method of claim 18, wherein the act (A) comprises an act of identifying all of the plurality of terms in the page.

34. The method of claim 18, wherein the intranet comprises a plurality of pages, and wherein the method comprises performing the acts (A) and (B) for each of the plurality of pages.

35. The method of claim 18, wherein the intranet is associated with a Web site.

31. The method of 28, wherein the act (C) comprises determining the subject matter specificity level based, at least in part, on a specificity value determined for the at least one page.

36. A method for parsing at least one page of an intranet comprising a plurality of pages, the at least one page comprising a plurality of terms arranged in a hierarchical structure, the method comprising acts of:

(A) parsing the at least one page to identify at least one of the plurality of terms; and

(B) determining, for each identified term, a specificity of the term associated with at least one specificity-related parameter selected from the group consisting of a tag parameter associated with the identified term and a page structure parameter associated with the identified term.

37. The method of claim 36, wherein the page structure parameter of an identified term is associated with a location of the identified term within the hierarchical structure of the page.

38. The method of claim 36, wherein the tag parameter of an identified term is associated with a tag type of a tag associated with the identified term.

39. The method of claim 38, wherein the tag parameter is associated with a frequency of appearance in the intranet of the tag type.

40. A computer readable medium encoded with a program for execution on at least one processor, the program, when executed on the at least one processor, performing a method for parsing at least one page of an intranet comprising a plurality of pages, the at least one page comprising a plurality of terms arranged in a hierarchical structure, the method comprising acts of:

(A) parsing the at least one page to identify at least one of the plurality of terms; and

(B) determining, for each identified term, a location of each identified term within the hierarchical structure of the page.

41. The computer readable medium of claim 40, wherein the hierarchical structure comprises a plurality of levels comprising at least one root level, and wherein the act (B) comprises determining the location by determining a number of levels in a shortest path from a level of the at least one root level to a level of the identified term.

42. The computer readable medium of claim 40, wherein the method further comprises an act (C) of storing information, for each identified term, indicating the location of the identified term within the hierarchical structure of the page.

43. The computer readable medium of claim 40, wherein the method further comprises an act (C) of determining a subject matter specificity level for the identified term in association at least in part with the location of the identified term in the hierarchical structure of the page.