Meta search engine

• US 6,999,959 B1
• Filed: 07/10/1998
• Issued: 02/14/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/10/1997
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: NEC Corporation
• Original Assignee: NEC Laboratories America Inc (NEC Corporation)
• Inventors: Lawrence, Stephen R., Giles, C. Lee
• Primary Examiner(s): Millin, Vincent
• Assistant Examiner(s): Colbert, Ella
• Application Number:
  US09/113,751
• Time in Patent Office: 2,776 Days
• Field of Search: 707/3, 707/5, 707/2, 707/4, 707/6, 707/7, 707/10, 345/866, 345/968, 709/218, 709/224, 709/227, 709/245
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9532 Query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A computer implemented meta search engine and search method. In accordance with this method, a query is forwarded to one or more third party search engines, and the responses from the third party search engine or engines are parsed in order to extract information regarding the documents matching the query. The full text of the documents matching the query are downloaded, and the query terms in the documents are located. The text surrounding the query terms are extracted, and that text is displayed.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented meta search engine method, comprising the steps of:

forwarding a query to a plurality of third party search engines;

receiving and processing responses from the third party search engines, said responses identifying documents in response to the query, said processing including the steps of,

(a) downloading the full text of the documents identified in response to the query, and

(b) locating query terms in the documents and extracting text surrounding the query terms to form at least one context string;

displaying information regarding the documents, and the at least one context string surrounding one or more of the query terms for each processed document containing the query terms; and

clustering the documents based on analysis of the full text of each document and identification of co-occurring phrases and words, and conjunctions thereof and displaying the information regarding the documents arranged by said clusters.

2. A computer-implemented meta search engine method, comprising the steps of:

forwarding a query to a plurality of third party search engines;

receiving and processing responses from the third party search engines, said responses identifying documents in response to the query, said processing including the steps of,

(a) downloading the full text of the documents identified in response to the query, and

(b) locating query terms in the documents and extracting text surrounding the query terms to form at least one context string;

displaying information regarding the documents, and the at least one context string surrounding one or more of the query terms for each processed document containing the query terms; and

displaying suggested additional query terms for expanding the query based on terms in the documents identified in response to the query.

3. A computer-implemented meta search engine method, comprising the steps of:

receiving a query and transforming the query from a form of a question into a form of an answer;

forwarding the transformed query to a plurality of third party search engines;

receiving and processing responses from the third party search engines, said responses identifying documents in response to the query, said processing including the steps of,

(a) downloading the full text of the documents identified in response to the query, and

(b) locating query terms in the documents and extracting text surrounding the query terms to form at least one context string; and

displaying information regarding the documents, and the at least one context string surrounding one or more of the query terms for each processed document containing the query terms.

4. A computer-implemented meta search engine method, comprising the steps of:

forwarding a query to a plurality of third party search engines;

receiving and processing responses from the third party search engines, said responses identifying documents in response to the query, said processing including the steps of,

(a) downloading the full text of the documents identified in response to the query, and

(b) locating query terms in the documents and extracting text surrounding the query terms to form at least one context string;

displaying information regarding the documents, including the at least one context string surrounding one or more of the query terms for each processed document containing the query terms; and

displaying an indication of how close the query terms are to each other in the documents.