METHOD FOR EXTRACTING, MERGING AND RANKING SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS
First Claim
1. A method for extracting, merging and ranking results produced by executing multi-domain queries over “
- n”
domain-specific search engines, said method comprising;
obtaining a query and an expected number of results K through a user interface;
decomposing said query into “
n”
subqueries and associating each subquery to at exactly one domain;
selecting one search engine for each said domain and one data source for each said search engine;
wherein the method comprises the further steps of;
performing sequential accesses to each said search engine in function of the associated subquery and receiving in response results consisting of lists of elements;
performing attribute-based access to each said data sources in function of results responded by search engines and receiving in response results consisting of sets of elements;
computing a plurality of combinations, each of which comprising “
n”
elements;
associating to each combination a combination score and ranking each element combination in function of the combination score;
extracting a number K of combinations with the highest combination score, so as to minimize a global cost of execution of said query, the cost being a function of the costs of requests to search engines and to data sources.
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Abstract
A method and a computer program product for identifying the domains, selecting for each domain one domain-specific search engine and data source to be involved, generating the domain-specific subqueries for each selected search engine, defining a strategy for sending requests to each search engine and data source, and receiving, merging and ranking results. The result of the multi-domain query is a list of combinations, where every combination consists of a tuple of data, each relative to one of the domains of the query; such data is present in the results returned either by search engines or by data sources. The method provides the combinations having the highest combination score, as computed by a monotone aggregation function over the combinations.
70 Citations
18 Claims
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1. A method for extracting, merging and ranking results produced by executing multi-domain queries over “
- n”
domain-specific search engines, said method comprising;obtaining a query and an expected number of results K through a user interface; decomposing said query into “
n”
subqueries and associating each subquery to at exactly one domain;selecting one search engine for each said domain and one data source for each said search engine; wherein the method comprises the further steps of; performing sequential accesses to each said search engine in function of the associated subquery and receiving in response results consisting of lists of elements; performing attribute-based access to each said data sources in function of results responded by search engines and receiving in response results consisting of sets of elements; computing a plurality of combinations, each of which comprising “
n”
elements;associating to each combination a combination score and ranking each element combination in function of the combination score; extracting a number K of combinations with the highest combination score, so as to minimize a global cost of execution of said query, the cost being a function of the costs of requests to search engines and to data sources. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
- n”
Specification