System and method for personalized search

• US 20060242135A1
• Filed: 04/20/2005
• Published: 10/26/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/20/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Weare, Christopher B.
• Granted Patent: US 7,599,916 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• 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

A system and method for incorporating user preferences into a document search is provided. User events are associated with one or more content tags based on a comparison of the user event with locations in a content space. The user events are tracked to provide a user event history. The user event history is analyzed to select content tags that correspond to user preferences. A search query is modified to include one or more selected content tags. The search query is then matched to documents associated with content tags contained in the search query.

Claims

1. A method of performing a search, comprising:

associating a plurality of user events for a user with content tags;

receiving a search query from the user;

selecting one or more of the associated content tags;

modifying the received search query with the one or more selected content tags;

matching the modified query with a document associated with at least one of the selected content tags.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting one or more of the content tags comprises:

maintaining a queue of content tags associated with user events for the user;

determining a threshold position in the queue; and

selecting all content tags have a position less than the threshold position.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting one or more of the content tags comprises:

tracking the frequency of occurrence for content tags associated with user events for the user;

determining a threshold frequency value; and

selecting all content tags having a frequency value greater than the threshold value.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting one or more of the content tags comprises:

maintaining a queue of primary content tags having a first resolution associated with user events for the user, each content tag being associated with a content location;

tracking a frequency value for secondary content tags having a second resolution, each secondary content tag being associated with a plurality of content tags having a first resolution;

determining a threshold preference value;

calculating a preference value for each content location; and

selecting a primary content tag and an associated secondary content tag for each content location having a preference value above the threshold value.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the preference value for each content location is calculated using the formula

$p_i=\alpha$

·

L li + { ⁢

β

·

exp ⁡

( - δ

·

H i ) , match ⁢

0 , nomatch

where α

, β

, and δ

are scaling factors, L_li is a frequency value for a secondary content tag corresponding to primary content tag for location i, and H_i is a position in the short term queue for the primary content tag corresponding to content space location i.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein a user event corresponds to a document accessed by the user.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein a user event corresponds to a search query received from the user.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein modifying a search query with a selected content tag further comprises modifying the search query with one or more content tags corresponding to the nearest neighbor positions in content space of the selected content tag.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting one or more of the associated content tags comprises:

identifying one or more stored content tags corresponding to each keyword in the received query; and

selecting one or more associated content tags that match at least one stored content tag.

10. A computer readable medium storing computer executable instructions for performing the method of claim 1.

11. A method for performing a document search, comprising:

providing a user event history comprising a plurality of stored content tags

analyzing the user event history to select one or more stored content tag;

modifying a search query to include the one or more selected content tags; and

matching the modified search query with the one or more documents associated with the at least one selected content tag.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the one or more documents each contain a plurality of keywords, the selected content tag not being a keyword contained in the one or more documents.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising providing the one or more matching documents in response to the modified search query.

14. The method of claim 13, where the one or more matching documents are provided as a prioritized list.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the matched documents are prioritized based on the number of content tag matches for each document.

16. A computer readable medium storing computer executable instructions for performing the method of claim 11.

17. A system for performing context based document searches comprising:

a grid builder for constructing a grid of content tiles, each content tile having a series of grid feature values;

a content tag assignment mechanism for assigning a content tag to each content tile;

a feature association mechanism for determining a series of feature values for a document and associating the document with one or more content tiles;

a user event tracker for maintaining a history of content tags corresponding to user events and selecting content tags corresponding to user preferences; and

a keyword matching mechanism for matching a document associated with a content tag to a search query.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising a search query modification mechanism for identifying a content tag and modifying the search query to include the identified content tag.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein identifying a content tag comprises receiving a selected content tag from the user event tracker.

20. The system of claim 17, further comprising a document indexing mechanism for storing associations between content tags and documents.