Internet navigation using soft hyperlinks
First Claim
1. A computer-implemented method for navigating through a set of electronic documents, comprising:
- capturing an indication of an initial term displayed in connection with a document, wherein the initial term is one of a plurality of terms displayed in connection with the document, wherein the plurality of terms includes hyperlinked and non-hyperlinked terms;
issuing an initial search request of the set of electronic documents, via a search engine, using an initial search query consisting of the initial term, the initial search request causing the search engine to perform a correlation analysis of the set of documents compared with the initial search query;
receiving a plurality of related terms from the search engine as an initial search result, the related terms determined from the correlation analysis of the set of documents;
selecting a predetermined number of the received plurality of related terms and presenting the selected related terms graphically;
capturing an indication of at least one of the plurality of related terms; and
issuing, responsive to the indication of the at least one of the related terms, at least one secondary search request, wherein a secondary search query associated with the secondary search request includes the indicated related term and the initial term;
storing a plurality of secondary search result document weights; and
retrieving an information file associated with a first one of the document weights and displaying a portion of the retrieved information file containing a first occurrence of the initial term.
6 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system for internet navigation using soft hyperlinks is disclosed, in connection with an illustrative information retrieval system with which it may be used. The navigation tool provides freedom to move through a collection of electronic documents independent of any hyperlink which has been inserted within an HTML page. A user can click on any term in a document page, not only those that are hyperlinked. For example, when a user clicks on an initial word within the document, the disclosed system employs a search engine in the background to retrieve a list of related terms. In an illustrative embodiment, a compass-like display appears with pointers indicating the first four terms returned by the search engine. These returned terms have the highest degree of correlation with the initial search term in a lexical knowledge base that the search engine constructs automatically. The disclosed system allows the user to move from the current document to one of a number of document lists which cover different associations between the initial word clicked on by the user and other terms extracted from within the retrieved list of related terms. The disclosed system may further allow the user to move to a document that is considered most related to the initial word clicked on by the user, or to a list of documents that are relevant to a phrase or paragraph selection indicated by the user within the current page.
507 Citations
61 Claims
-
1. A computer-implemented method for navigating through a set of electronic documents, comprising:
-
capturing an indication of an initial term displayed in connection with a document, wherein the initial term is one of a plurality of terms displayed in connection with the document, wherein the plurality of terms includes hyperlinked and non-hyperlinked terms;
issuing an initial search request of the set of electronic documents, via a search engine, using an initial search query consisting of the initial term, the initial search request causing the search engine to perform a correlation analysis of the set of documents compared with the initial search query;
receiving a plurality of related terms from the search engine as an initial search result, the related terms determined from the correlation analysis of the set of documents;
selecting a predetermined number of the received plurality of related terms and presenting the selected related terms graphically;
capturing an indication of at least one of the plurality of related terms; and
issuing, responsive to the indication of the at least one of the related terms, at least one secondary search request, wherein a secondary search query associated with the secondary search request includes the indicated related term and the initial term;
storing a plurality of secondary search result document weights; and
retrieving an information file associated with a first one of the document weights and displaying a portion of the retrieved information file containing a first occurrence of the initial term. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
-
-
17. A navigation system for examining a set of electronic documents, comprising:
-
a search engine structured to perform a correlation analysis of a query and the set of electronic documents and determine related terms, each related term an indicator of a set of documents that is related to the query;
a graphic navigation tool structured to receive and display a plurality of secondary terms;
capture an indication of at least one of the plurality of displayed secondary terms;
issue a secondary search request that includes the indicated secondary term and the initial term in a secondary search query;
receive a plurality of indicators of documents that are related to the secondary search query, the indicators of the related documents having associated document weights;
retrieve an information file associated with a first one of the document weights; and
display a portion of the retrieved information file containing a first occurrence of the initial term; and
a user interface structured to capture an indication of an initial term from a plurality of terms displayed in connection with the document, wherein the displayed plurality of terms includes hyperlinked and non-hyperlinked terms;
issue an initial search request of the set of electronic documents to the search engine, using an initial search query consisting of the initial term;
receive a plurality of related terms from the search engine as an initial search result, the related terms determined from the correlation analysis;
select a predetermined number of the received plurality of related terms; and
invoke the graphic navigation tool with the selected related terms as the plurality of secondary terms to display. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28)
-
-
29. A computer-implemented method for navigating through a corpus of documents stored in a network of computer systems, comprising:
-
displaying a document with a plurality of terms and receiving an indication of an initial one of the plurality of terms;
automatically causing a search engine to perform a search using an initial search query that contains the indicated initial term, the search performing a correlation analysis of the corpus of documents relative to the initial term and determining a set of related terms from documents that are directly related to the initial term and from documents that have latent associations with the initial term, each related term associated with a set of documents that are related to the initial term;
receiving from the search engine the determined set of related terms and presenting a determined number of the received related terms through a navigation tool;
receiving an indication of one of the presented related terms;
automatically causing a secondary search to be performed using a secondary search query that includes the initial term and the indicated related term, the secondary search determining a set of weighted indicators to documents; and
receiving the determined set of weighted indicators to documents and displaying a portion of one or more documents that are indicated by one or more of the weighted indicators. - View Dependent Claims (30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
-
-
41. A computer-readable memory medium containing instructions for controlling a computer processor to navigate through a corpus of documents stored in a network of computer systems, by:
-
displaying a document with a plurality of terms and receiving an indication of an initial one of the plurality of terms;
automatically causing a search engine to perform a search using an initial search query that contains the indicated initial term, the search performing a correlation analysis of the corpus of documents relative to the initial term and determining a set of related terms from documents that are directly related to the initial term and from documents that have latent associations with the initial term, each related term associated with a set of documents that are related to the initial term;
receiving from the search engine the determined set of related terms and presenting a determined number of the received related terms through a navigation tool;
receiving an indication of one of the presented related terms;
automatically causing a secondary search to be performed using a secondary search query that includes the initial term and the indicated related term, the secondary search determining a set of weighted indicators to documents; and
receiving the determined set of weighted indicators to documents and displaying a portion of one or more documents that are indicated by one or more of the weighted indicators. - View Dependent Claims (42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49)
-
-
50. A navigation system for determining relevant information from a corpus of documents stored in a network of computer systems, comprising:
-
a search engine that is structured to perform a correlation analysis of the corpus of documents relative to a search query containing an initial term and to determine a set of related terms from documents that are directly related to the initial term and from documents that have latent associations with the initial term, each related term associated with a set of documents that are related to the initial term; and
a user interface that is structured to display a document with a plurality of terms and receive an indication of one of the plurality of terms;
automatically invoke the search engine using a search query that contains the indicated term and receive from the search engine the determined set of related terms;
present a determined number of the received related terms through a navigation tool and receive an indication of one of the presented related terms;
automatically cause a secondary search to be performed using a secondary search query that includes the initial term and the indicated related term, the secondary search determining a set of weighted indicators to documents; and
receive the determined set of weighted indicators to documents and display a portion of one or more documents that are indicated by one or more of the weighted indicators. - View Dependent Claims (51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
-
Specification