SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GENERATING SUBSTITUTABLE QUERIES

• US 20080140699A1
• Filed: 07/02/2007
• Published: 06/12/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/09/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Jones, Rosie, Rey, Benjamin, Weyand, Tina
• Granted Patent: US 7,962,479 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/102
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3325 Reformulation based on results of preceding query
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access

Abstract

The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for generating one or more related queries with respect to a given query. The method may comprise receiving a query comprising one or more terms, generating a corpus of candidate reformulations and identifying one or more queries or terms from the corpus of candidate reformulations related to the received query. One or more related queries are generated on the basis of the identified one or more queries or terms from the corpus of candidate reformulations.

Claims

1. A method for generating one or more related queries with respect to a given query, the method comprising:

receiving a query comprising one or more terms;

generating a corpus of candidate reformulations;

identifying one or more queries or terms from the corpus of candidate reformulations related to the received query; and

generating one or more related queries on the basis of the identified one or more queries or terms from the corpus of candidate reformulations.

2. The method of claim 1 comprising segmenting the received query into one or more segments.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein segmenting the received query comprises segmenting the received query into one or more terms or phrases.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein generating the corpus of candidate reformulations comprises generating a pair of successive queries of one or more terms.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein generating the corpus of candidate reformulations comprises generating a pair of successive segments of one or more terms.

6. The method of claim 2 wherein identifying comprises identifying one or more queries or terms from the corpus of candidate reformulations related to the one or more segments of the received query.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving a query comprises receiving from a user of a client device.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein generating a corpus of candidate reformulations comprises:

identifying one or more pairs of queries issued successively by one or more users of client devices; and

generating a corpus of candidate reformulations on the basis of the one or more identified pairs of queries.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein generating a corpus of candidate reformulations comprises:

segmenting one or more queries issued successively by one or more users of client devices;

identifying one or more differing segments between the successively issued queries; and

generating a corpus of candidate reformulations on the basis of the one or more segments.