TARGET BASED INDEXING OF MICRO-BLOG CONTENT

• US 20130159277A1
• Filed: 12/14/2011
• Published: 06/20/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Liu, Xiaohua, Zhou, Ming, Wei, Furu
• Application Number:
  US13/326,028
• Publication Number:
  US 20130159277A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/709
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/901 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures for retrieval from the web G06F16/951
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/211 Syntactic parsing, e.g. based on context-free grammar [CFG] or unification grammars
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/295 Named entity recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis

Abstract

Target based indexing of micro-blog content may include extracting, labeling, and indexing data contained in micro-blog entries. For example, by adapting natural language processing (NLP) technologies to a micro-blog entry, data is extracted in order to create an index. In one embodiment, a search engine may access the index in order to return results of a search query. In another embodiment, a user interface may display micro-blog entries categorically, allowing the user to access micro-blog entries by event, quote, opinion, or other category.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

one or more processors; and

memory, communicatively coupled to the one or more processors,

a data extraction module stored in the memory and executable by the processor to;

pre-process a micro-blog entry; and

extract data from the micro-blog entry based at least in part on one or more natural language processing technologies, the one or more natural language processing technologies including named entity recognition (NER) to locate and classify elements in the micro-blog entry into predefined categories, the NER comprising a combination of a k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier with a conditional random field (CRF) labeler;

a classification module stored in the memory and executable by the processor to classify the micro-blog entry into pre-defined categories; and

an index module stored in the memory and executable by the processor to;

index the extracted data and the micro-blog entry;

receive a request; and

provide the extracted data and the micro-blog entry based on the request.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein providing the extracted data comprises returning search results or serving categorized micro-blog entries for browsing.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the pre-processing comprises, for each micro-blog entry:

normalizing the micro-blog entry to identify and correct informal language or misspelled words;

parsing the micro-blog entry based on part-of-speech, chunking, and dependency; and

determining whether to remove the micro-blog entry based on a number of terms in the entry.

6. The system of claim 1, the one or more natural language processing technologies further including semantic role labeling (SRL) to identify each predicate in the micro-blog entry and an argument associated with each predicate in order to assign a label to the micro-blog entry.

7. The system of claim 6, the SRL caching each assigned label and grouping the micro-blog entry with other similar labeled micro-blog entries.

8. The system of claim 1, the one or more natural language processing technologies further including sentiment analysis (SA) to determine an opinion of the request and classify an opinion of the micro-blog entry based on its relation to the opinion in the request.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the opinion of the micro-blog entry based on its relation to the opinion in the request is determined by at least one of subjectivity classification, polarity classification, or graph-based optimization.

10. The system of claim 1, the one or more natural language processing technologies further including semantic role labeling (SRL) and sentiment analysis (SA).

11. The system of claim 1, wherein classifying the micro-blog entry into pre-defined categories is determined based at least in part by content of another micro-blog entry or reposting the micro-blog entry.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the request is a semantic search query or a structured search query.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the request is received from a search engine or a search box in a web browser.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein an additional data extraction module, an additional classification module, and an additional index module process an additional micro-blog entry in parallel.

15. The system of claim 1, the pre-defined categories including popularity, entity, event, or opinion.

4. (canceled)

5. (canceled)

16. A method comprising:

under control of one or more processors;

generating one or more indexes of micro-blog entries based at least in part on one or more natural language processing technologies including named entity recognition (NER), the NER comprising a combination of a k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier with a conditional random field (CRF) labeler;

receiving, at a processing server, a search query;

processing the search query against the one or more indexes of micro-blog entries, the indexes being configured to search the micro-blog entries based on a category associated with each micro-blog entry;

surfacing categories of micro-blogs related to the search query; and

making the categories available for access or display.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the one or more natural language processing technologies further include semantic role labeling (SRL) and sentiment analysis (SA).

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising performing a second search query of an index of micro-blog entries based on the categories displayed.

19. One or more computer readable storage media encoded with instructions that, when executed, direct a computing device to perform operations comprising:

repeatedly downloading micro-blog entries;

filtering the micro-blog entries based on a number of terms in each entry;

applying named entity recognition to locate and classify elements in each entry into pre-defined categories, the named entity recognition comprising a combination of a k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier with a conditional random field (CRF) labeler;

applying semantic role labeling to identify each predicate in the micro-blog entries and an argument associated with each predicate in order to assign a label to each entry;

applying sentiment analysis to determine an opinion of a request and classify an opinion of each entry based on its relation to the opinion in the request;

indexing the pre-defined categories, the label, and the opinion associated with each entry;

receiving a search query;

in response to receiving the search query;

returning search results based on the indexing, the search results including both the micro-blog entries and the pre-defined categories, the label, and the opinion associated with each entry; and

making the search results available to a web application.

20. The one or more computer readable storage media of claim 19, wherein the KNN classifier and the CRF labeler are repeatedly retrained based on previous operations, the KNN classifier making a connection between the micro-blog entry and a neighbor in a micro-blog entry graph based on similar content or a cross-reference.