PRESENTATION OF STRUCTURED SEARCH RESULTS

• US 20080005118A1
• Filed: 06/29/2006
• Published: 01/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: SHAKIB, DARREN A., FLAKE, GARY WILLIAM, NAAM, RAMEZ
• Granted Patent: US 7,792,821 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A method and system is provided for automatically displaying a search-refinement user interface based on structure identified in search results in response to unstructured search queries. A list of search results obtained by a search engine is analyzed to determined whether a structure threshold is satisfied. If the threshold is met, then search-refinement options are displayed on a common display with the search results to allow the user to filter the search results according to the structure identified in the results. The user interface can receive filter and sort requests from the user to further refine the search results based on overlapping schema attributes or other shared-structure elements identified in the search results.

Claims

1. A method in a computerized environment for automatically displaying web-search results in a structure-based, search-refinement interface, the method comprising:

receiving a web-search query;

obtaining web-search results based on the web-search query;

analyzing the web-search results to identify shared-structure elements present in the web-search results;

determining whether sufficient shared-structure elements are present in the web-search results to satisfy a structure threshold; and

if the structure threshold is satisfied, automatically displaying one or more search-refinement options and the web-search results on a common display, wherein the search-refinement options are based on the identified-shared-structure elements.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a request to refine the search results according to at least one selected-shared-structure element; and

filtering the search results according to the selected-shared-structure element.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

automatically displaying one or more columns listing, for each search result, a value associated with each selected-shared-structure element.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the structure threshold is satisfied if a sufficient percentage or absolute count of the search results have one or more shared-structure elements.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the shared-structure elements are overlapping schema attributes.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the overlapping schema attributes are similar name-value pairs in meta-tags or in XML-code contained in the search results, wherein the similar name-value pairs share common name fields.

8. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing the steps recited in claim 1.

9. A system for automatically providing a structured-search-results user interface in response to unstructured queries, the system comprising:

a data store comprising information elements, wherein the information elements comprise structured data, semi-structured data, and unstructured data;

a search engine component that is operative to obtain search results from the data store in response to a search query and further operative to determine whether the search results have schemas with attributes that overlap sufficiently to meet a structure threshold; and

an interface component that is operative to display the search results on a common display with search-refining options if the structure threshold is met, wherein the search-refining options correspond to one or more overlapping schema attributes.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the search results are internet-search results and the search query is an internet-search query.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the search engine component is further operative to determine whether the search results vary sufficiently to satisfy a variance threshold with respect to a particular overlapping schema attribute.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the one or more overlapping schema attributes are similar name-value pairs in meta-tags or in XML-code contained in the search results, wherein the similar name-value pairs share common name fields.

13. The system of claim 9, wherein the one or more overlapping schema attributes are common to a shared formal schema, and further wherein the search-refining options displayed comprise filter and sort options specified by the shared formal schema.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein the interface component is further operative to receive a request to refine the search results by applying a filter based on at least one selected overlapping schema attribute.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the interface component is further operative to automatically display one or more columns listing, for each search result, a value associated with each selected overlapping schema attribute.

16. A computer-implemented method for automatically providing search-refinement options in response to a user'"'"'s unstructured search query, the method comprising:

receiving an unstructured search query from a user;

generating a list of search results ranked in order of relevance to the search query;

analyzing a set of highly-relevant search results to determine whether the highly-relevant search results share at least one common structure attribute that is capable of being categorized;

if so, analyzing the list of search results to generate at least one search filter based on the common structure attribute and displaying a structured-search-results interface suggesting the search filter to the user; and

if not, displaying an unstructured-search-results interface.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein if the highly-relevant results share at least one common structure attribute that is capable of being categorized, the method further comprises:

receiving a request to filter the list of search results using the suggested search filter;

filtering the list of search results using the search filter to generate a list of refined search results; and

displaying the list of refined search results on the structured-search-results interface.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the generation of the at least one search filter based on the common structure attribute comprises determining whether a variance threshold is satisfied for the common structure attribute across the set of highly-relevant results.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the common structure attribute is a price, rating, date, author, or source.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the common structure attribute is a generic name field contained in the metadata of the search results.