SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL METHODS AND SYSTEMS OF SHORT MESSAGES UTILIZING MESSAGING CONTEXT AND KEYWORD FREQUENCY

• US 20110093455A1
• Filed: 10/21/2010
• Published: 04/21/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/21/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Citizennet Inc. (Advance Publications Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Citizennet Inc. (Advance Publications Incorporated)
• Inventors: Hall, Michael Aaron, Benyamin, Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 8,380,697 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/723
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9536 Search customisation based on social or collaborative filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/00 User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]

Abstract

Systems and methods of identifying and retrieving messages that satisfy a search query using the context of the message and term frequencies are provided. One embodiment includes identifying at least one category relevant to the search query, wherein a plurality of scored keywords are associated with each category, selecting at least one of the scored keywords that is relevant to an identified category, performing a plurality of searches of messages from a social networking messaging service to retrieve messages, where at least one search includes retrieving messages based on the original search query and one of the selected scored keywords, scoring the retrieved messages with respect to each of the at least one identified categories using at least the scored keywords relevant to each category, and returning at least the message with the highest score as the search result.

Claims

1. A method of identifying messages on a social networking messaging service that satisfy a search query, the method comprising:

identifying at least one category relevant to the search query, wherein a plurality of scored keywords are associated with each category;

selecting at least one of the scored keywords that is relevant to an identified category;

performing a plurality of searches of messages from a social networking messaging service to retrieve messages, where at least one search includes retrieving messages based on the original search query and one of the selected scored keywords;

scoring the retrieved messages with respect to each of the at least one identified categories using at least the scored keywords relevant to each category; and

returning at least the message with the highest score as the search result.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the user indicates at least one category relevant to the search query.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the query is scored with respect to each category using the scored keywords associated with each category and at least one category is identified based upon the query score.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein:

selecting at least one of the scored keywords that is relevant to an identified category comprises selecting a plurality of scored keywords relevant to an identified category; and

performing a plurality of searches of messages from a social networking messaging service further comprises performing a separate search for each of the selected scored keywords, where each search includes retrieving messages based on the original search query and the selected scored keyword.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein performing a plurality of searches of messages from a social networking messaging service further comprises performing a search, where the messages are retrieved based on the original search query.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein scoring the retrieved messages with respect to each of the at least one identified categories using the scored keywords relevant to each category further comprises excluding any scored keyword used in the search that retrieved the message from the scoring of the message.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the searches include performing expression matching.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the searches include scoring the message with respect to the original search query and the selected scored keyword.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein scoring the retrieved messages further comprises weighting messages based upon the amount of time that has elapsed since the message was posted.