Automatic generation of taxonomies for categorizing queries and search query processing using taxonomies

• US 20060122994A1
• Filed: 12/06/2004
• Published: 06/08/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Joshi, Deepa, Parikh, Jignashu, Kapur, Shyam
• Granted Patent: US 7,428,533 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/367 Ontology
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

Systems and methods for processing search requests are provided, including automatic generation of taxonomies and query processing using those taxonomies.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for generating at least one taxonomy automatically from data about queries in a querying system, the method comprising:

generating, from query logs representing previous queries, a concept network identifying unit concepts represented in the queries, wherein the concept network reflects unit concepts determined by considering frequency of appearance of terms in the query logs and frequency of appearance of terms together in queries; and

organizing the concept network hierarchically to form a taxonomy.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

performing a search of a corpus using a current query; and

modifying search results according to a mapping of the current query onto the at least one taxonomy.