CONTEXT-BASED DOCUMENT SEARCH

• US 20090171938A1
• Filed: 12/28/2007
• Published: 07/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Levin, Lewis Charles, Pratley, Christopher Hugh
• Granted Patent: US 7,984,035 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Systems and corresponding methodologies are disclosed that employ ‘context’ of a document upon searching for relevant or desired references/results. The innovation establishes ‘context’ of a document thereby increasing relevance upon returning results to search queries. Context-based searching establishes relationships between terms of a document in order to focus more upon an interpretation of a document rather than merely considering a topic of a document based upon word occurrences, as used by traditional searching mechanisms.

Claims

1. A document search system that employs context of a plurality of documents, comprising:

a context analyzer component that establishes context of each of the plurality of documents; and

a search engine that identifies a plurality of search results based upon the context of each of the plurality of documents in view of a search query.

2. The system of claim 1, the context analyzer component employs word patterns within a document to establish the context.

3. The system of claim 1, the context analyzer component employs locality of terms within a document to establish the context.

4. The system of claim 1, the context analyzer employs at least one of a keyword, occurrence rate of a keyword, usage of a keyword, title, author, creation date, or storage location to establish the context.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a category association component that maps each context to an appropriate category, wherein the search engine renders the plurality of search results as a function of a plurality of categories.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising an index generator component that generates a context-based index of the plurality of documents, wherein the context analyzer employs the context-based index to establish the context of each of the plurality of documents.

7. The system of claim 1, the context analyzer includes a text analyzer that employs a language parser to establish the context.

8. The system of claim 1, the context analyzer includes an audio analyzer that employs speech recognition to establish the context.

9. The system of claim 1, the context analyzer includes an image analyzer that employs one of facial or pattern recognition to establish the context.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising a results configuration component that renders the plurality of search results as a function of context-based categories.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising at least one of a filter component, a ranking component or an ordering component that organizes the categorized search results for rendering.

12. The system of claim 1, further comprising a machine learning and reasoning component that employs at least one of a probabilistic and a statistical-based analysis that infers an action that a user desires to be automatically performed.

13. A computer-implemented method of context-based searching, comprising:

establishing a context of each of a plurality of documents;

identifying a subset of the plurality of documents based upon context in view of a search query; and

rendering the subset of the plurality of documents.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, the act of rendering includes categorizing the subset of the plurality of documents based upon context in view of the search query.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, the act of establishing the context comprises:

parsing text within each of the plurality of documents; and

analyzing the parsed text to establish the context.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, the act of establishing the context comprises:

converting speech to text within each of the plurality of documents; and

analyzing the text to establish the context.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, the act of establishing the context comprises:

employing pattern recognition to classify images within each of the plurality of documents; and

analyzing the images to establish the context.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, further comprising establishing a context-based index that maintains reference to each of the plurality of documents, wherein the act of identifying the subset of the plurality of documents employs the context-based index.

19. A computer-executable system comprising:

means for establishing an index of a plurality of documents based upon context of each of the plurality of documents; and

means for employing the index to identify contextually-relevant documents in view of a search query.

20. The computer-executable system of claim 19, further comprising means for rendering the contextually-relevant documents based upon context-based categories.