INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM FOR ARCHIVING MULTIPLE DOCUMENT VERSIONS

• US 20100169305A1
• Filed: 03/04/2010
• Published: 07/01/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Patterson, Anna L.
• Granted Patent: US 8,612,427 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/728
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/219 Managing data history or versioning querying versioned data G06F16/2474; querying temporal data G06F16/2477
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases. Index data for multiple versions or instances of documents is also maintained. Each document instance is associated with a date range and relevance data derived from the document for the date range.

Claims

1. A method of retrieving documents in response to a search query, the method comprising:

selecting a plurality of documents that are relevant to the query by determining a relevance score for each document;

determining for each document a date range for which the document associated, the date range associated with relevance data for the document during the date range;

weighting the relevance score of each document according to a difference between a current date and the date range associated with the document; and

ranking the selected documents according to their weighted relevance scores.

2. A method of retrieving documents in response to a search query, the method comprising:

determining a date term included in the search query;

selecting a plurality of documents, each of which having an instance of the document during a date range including the date term;

determining for each selected document a relevance score using relevance data associated with the instance of the document during the date range; and

ranking the selected documents according to their relevance scores.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein ranking the selected documents further comprises:

weighting the relevance scores each selected document according to a difference between a current date and the date range associated with the selected document; and

ranking the selected documents according to their weighted relevance scores.

4. A method of retrieving documents in response to a search query, the method comprising:

selecting a plurality of documents that are relevant to the query by determining a relevance score for each document;

determining for each document a date range for which the document associated, the date range associated with relevance data for the document during the date range;

grouping the documents into groups according to the date range associated with each document; and

within each group, ordering the documents according to their relevance scores.

5. A method of retrieving documents in response to a search query, the method comprising:

selecting a plurality of documents that are relevant to the query by determining a relevance score for each document, each document having one or more instances of the document, each document instance associated with a respective date range and relevance data for the document instance during the date range;

determining for each instance of a document, a relevance score using the relevance data associated with the document instance;

selecting for each document the document instance with the highest relevance score;

ranking the selected document instances according to their relevance scores.