System and method for query expansion

• US 20080154856A1
• Filed: 12/20/2006
• Published: 06/26/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/20/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Jones, Rosie, Patel, Devesh, Riise, Soren, Campbell, Bruce, Stipp, Eugene, Richardson-Bunbury, David
• Granted Patent: US 7,685,119 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3338 Query expansion
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A system is disclosed for expanding a user query based on user learned popularity rankings. User queries often have no exact match, resulting in a user having to refine or abandon the search. The disclosed system obtains popularity rankings based on the content of a user query. The system expands the user query based on the popularity rankings. Thereafter, query results based on the expanded user query may be provided to the user. The system also regularly learns from user behavior and adapts the popularity rankings according to the learned information.

Claims

1. A method for augmenting a user query, comprising:

receiving the user query;

obtaining a first popularity ranking associated with the user query;

generating an augmented query by augmenting the user query based on the first popularity ranking; and

providing the augmented query to a search engine.

2. The method of claim 1, where the query comprises a geographic component.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising disambiguating the query based on the first popularity ranking.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

associating the query with a first geographic locality;

identifying at least one neighboring locality in proximity to the first geographic locality; and

providing a ranking of the at least one neighboring locality based on the first popularity ranking, where the augmenting of the user query is based in part on the ranking.

6. The method of claim 4, further comprising obtaining neighboring locality popularity rankings associated with each of the at least one neighboring localities, where the ranking is based on the neighboring locality popularity rankings.

7. The method of claim 1, where the first popularity ranking comprises a reference count.

8. The method of claim 1, where the first popularity ranking comprises user click behavior.

9. The method of claim 1, where the first popularity ranking comprises query refinement data.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising obtaining a second popularity ranking associated with the user query, where the user query comprises a first component and a second component, and where the first popularity ranking is obtained based on content of the first component and the second popularity ranking is obtained based on content of the second component.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising augmenting the user query based on the second popularity ranking.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

monitoring user behavior; and

augmenting the first popularity ranking based on the user behavior.

5. (canceled)

11. (canceled)

14. A query expansion system for augmenting a query, the query expansion system comprising:

a processor;

a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising instructions that cause the processor to;

obtain a first popularity ranking associated with a received user query;

associate the received user query with a first geographic locality where the received user query comprises a geographic component;

generate an augmented query by augmenting the received user query based on the first popularity ranking; and

provide the augmented query to a search engine.

15. The system of claim 14, where the first popularity ranking comprises user click behavior.

17. The system of claim 14, further comprising instructions that cause the processor to:

monitor a user'"'"'s response to search results generated from the augmented query; and

augment the first popularity ranking based on the user'"'"'s actions.

18. The system of claim 14, where the received user query is associated with the first geographic locality based on the first popularity ranking.

19. The system of claim 14, the memory further comprising instructions that cause the processor to:

identify at least one neighboring geographic locality of the first geographic locality; and

rank the at least one neighboring geographic locality.

20. The system of claim 19, where the at least one neighboring geographic locality is identified based on the first popularity ranking.

16. (canceled)

21. A system for augmenting a query comprising:

an augmenting server operable to;

obtain a first popularity ranking associated with a received user query;

generate an augmented query by augmenting the received user query based on the first popularity ranking; and

provide the augmented query to a search engine;

a web server operable to receive results from the search engine and present the results to a user; and

a learning server operable to;

monitor a user'"'"'s response to the search results; and

augmenting the first popularity ranking based on the user'"'"'s actions.

22. The system of claim 21, where the learning server is further operable to:

scan a corpus of data;

track the number of times a term appears in the corpus of data; and

augment the first popularity ranking based on the number of times the term appears in the corpus of data.

23. The system of claim 21, where the augmenting server is further operable to associate the received user query with a first geographic locality.

24. The system of claim 23, where the augmenting server is further operable to identify neighboring geographic localities, where the neighboring geographic localities neighbor the first geographic locality.

25. The system of claim 24, where augmented query is augmented to include one or more of the neighboring localities based on the first popularity ranking.

26. The system of claim 24, where the augmenting server is further operable to:

provide a ranking of one or more of the neighboring geographic localities based on the first popularity ranking; and

where the augmented query is augmented based in part on the ranking.

27. The system of claim 21, where augmenting server is further operable to disambiguate the received user query based on the first popularity ranking.

28. The system of claim 21, where the augmenting server is further operable to:

generate a result ranking; and

order the search results based on the result ranking.