CUSTOMIZABLE ORDERING OF SEARCH RESULTS AND PREDICTIVE QUERY GENERATION

• US 20110145225A1
• Filed: 02/25/2011
• Published: 06/16/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/05/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kapur, Shyam, Harish, J.P., Parikh, Jignashu
• Granted Patent: US 10,061,853 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/722
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results

Abstract

In a computerized search system, a document corpus is searched according to a query and results of the search are presentable as an ordered search result set comprising one or more search hits, a search hit being a document of the document corpus or reference thereto. Based on content of the search result set, a number of suggested queries and/or parameter options are presented to a querier, thereby allowing the querier to select a suggested query and/or provide values for the parameters and those selections can be used to reorder the hits of the search result set. The particular suggested queries and/or parameters presented depend on the page elements of the search result set'"'"'s documents and their categorization. The categorization might be done using concept networks.

Claims

1. A computerized search method for searching a document corpus according to a query and communicating results of the search as a search result set comprising one or more search hits, a search hit being a document of the document corpus or reference thereto, the method comprising:

receiving from a client system a query from a querier;

identifying at least one concept associated with the query;

determining one or more categorizations of the at least one concept;

retrieving a search result set for the query;

generating a set of slider parameters for the search result set on the basis of the determined one or more categorizations of the at least one concept, wherein each slider parameter comprises a setting to vary search hit order according to a slider value of the slider parameter.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying at least one concept for a plurality of documents in the document corpus in advance of queries being received.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the querier is one of a human or a computer.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing, to the client system, the search result set in a first ordering and a set of sliders to adjust slider values for each of the slider parameters of the set of slider parameters.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

reordering the search result set in a second ordering according to slider values selected by the querier

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

accepting, from the client system, the slider values for a set of sliders as submitted by the querier; and

reordering the search result set into the second order according to the accepted slider values.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying a plurality of sub-concepts for the at least one concept.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the set of slider parameters comprises a slider parameter for each of the plurality of sub-concepts.

9. A search system comprising at least one computing device coupled to a client device over a communication network, the at least one computing device comprising a search engine, the at least one computing device operable therewith at least to:

receive a query from the client device,

identify at least one concept associated with the query,

determine one or more categorizations of the at least one concept,

retrieve search results for the query, and

generate a set of slider parameters, for presentation to the client device, on the basis of the one or more categorizations of the at least one concept, wherein each slider parameter comprises a setting to vary search hit order according to a slider value of the slider parameter.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the at least one computing device is operative to identify at least one concept for a plurality of documents in a document corpus in advance of queries being received.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the at least one computing device is operative to provide, to the client device, the search results in a first ordering and a set of sliders to adjust slider values for each of the slider parameters of the set of slider parameters.

12. The system of claim 9, wherein the at least one computing device is operative to reorder the search results in a second ordering according to slider values selected by a querier

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the at least one computing device is operative to:

accept, from the client device, the slider values for a set of sliders as submitted by the querier; and

reorder the search results into the second order according to the accepted slider values.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein the at least one computing device is operative to identify a plurality of sub-concepts for the at least one concept.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the set of slider parameters comprises a slider parameter for each of the plurality of sub-concepts.