PRODUCT REVIEW SEARCH

• US 20080215571A1
• Filed: 02/01/2008
• Published: 09/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/01/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Huang, Shen, Chen, Zheng, Sun, Jian-Tao, Wang, Min, Wu, Jianmin
• Application Number:
  US12/024,930
• Publication Number:
  US 20080215571A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/345 Summarisation for human users

Abstract

This disclosure describes various exemplary methods, computer program products, and user interfaces that provide results for a product review search with opinion snippets and opinion visual graphs. This disclosure describes identifying user opinions by extracting passages that contain subjective opinions from web pages; ranking the user opinions by incorporating sentiment orientations and sentiment topics, where the sentiment orientations are positive or negative; and generating review snippets to indicate user sentiment orientations and to describe user opinions toward product features. This disclosure improves a user product search experience from the following aspects: understanding the product review from snippets instead of browsing the web page; obtaining more information by reading reviews in a shorter time period; and obtaining overall opinions of users of the web through visualized opinion summarization.

Claims

1. A method for a product review search, implemented at least in part by a computing device, the method comprising:

identifying user opinions by extracting passages that contain subjective opinions from web pages;

ranking the user opinions by incorporating sentiment orientations and sentiment topics; and

generating review snippets to indicate user sentiment orientations and to describe user opinions toward product features.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein sentiment orientations comprise classifying sentiments as positive, negative, or neutral.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein ranking the user opinions comprises extracting product features, extracting opinion appraisals through machine learning techniques using dictionaries and web resources, and classifying sentiment orientations.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein ranking the user opinions comprises an opinion richness, an opinion diversity, a topic richness, and a topic diversity.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the sentiment orientations are determined using a Naï

ve Bayesian technique.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising using an affinity rank algorithm for metrics of diversity and information richness to measure a quality of search results by using a content based link structure of a group document and a content of a single document in search results.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the review snippets comprises assigning a higher weight to a short segment that contains a product feature and opinion keywords.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the review snippets comprises using a greedy algorithm to highlight product features, a positive appraise, and a negative appraise with different colors.

9. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-readable instructions executable on a computing device, the computer-readable instructions comprising:

receiving a query for a product review search;

extracting sentences from a search result page to predict each sentence into a subjective category;

extracting a word or a phrase that expresses an opinion from the sentences in the subjective category as final product features;

extracting a word or a phrase that can express an opinion using machine learning techniques combined with dictionaries and web resources; and

classifying sentiment orientations.

10. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, further comprising generating review snippets to indicate user sentiment orientations and to describe user opinions toward product features.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein generating the review snippets comprises assigning a higher weight to a short segment that contains a product feature and opinion keywords.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, further comprising generating a two dimensional polar graph to display variables with different quantitative scales, wherein the polar graph represents an opinion summary.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, further comprising using an affinity rank algorithm for metrics of diversity and information richness by measuring a quality of search results by considering a content based link structure of a group document and a content of a single document in the search results.

14. A user interface having computer-readable instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform acts comprising:

receiving a query for a product review search;

generating opinion-based snippets by highlighting product features, positive comments, and negative comments;

presenting a two dimensional polar graph to display variables with different quantitative scales, wherein the polar graph represents an opinion summary.

15. The user interface of claim 14, wherein the opinion-based snippets illustrates an understanding of a product review.

16. The user interface of claim 14, wherein the two dimensional polar graph is generated by statistics for a top list of six most frequent product features.

17. The user interface of claim 14, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to present user snippets containing opinions that are listed side by side to enable comparison of two product reviews.

18. The user interface of claim 14, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to present a first two dimensional polar graph overlapped with a second dimensional polar graph to illustrate differences for different features for two products.

19. The user interface of claim 14, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to construct an affinity graph in terms of diversity and information richness, affinity between reviews, and usage of topic sensitive page ranking technologies.

20. The user interface of claim 14, wherein the instructions further cause the computing device to generate opinion-based snippets comprising a greedy algorithm to highlight product features, a positive appraise, and a negative appraise with different colors.