Method for extracting information associated with a search term

• US 7,590,936 B1
• Filed: 09/30/2003
• Issued: 09/15/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Bendig, Krista
• Primary Examiner(s): Hillery; Nathan
• Application Number:
  US10/675,838
• Time in Patent Office: 2,177 Days
• Field of Search: 715/517, 715/539, 707/3, 707/102, 707/6
• US Class Current: 715/272
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/30 of unstructured textual data document management systems G06F16/93
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access

Abstract

Extracting tagged data items that may be associated with results of a search in an electronic document and presenting the tagged data items through a graphical user interface (GUI). The tagged data may be presented in a separate window displaying search results. The tagged data items may be presented adjacent to individual search results or at the top of a window displaying search results. The displayed tagged items may be presented as hyperlinks that enable a user to move to a section of an electronic document containing that tagged data item. The tagged data items, which may include names, physical addresses, e-mail addresses, universal resource locators (URLs), dates, and telephone numbers, may represent a subset of the tagged data item categories contained in the electronic document.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for displaying one or more tagged data items proximate to a result of a search of an electronic document, comprising the steps of:

locating one or more of the search results generated by the search of the electronic document;

identifying each of the tagged data items present in the electronic document within a distance from each search result using a proximity rule, wherein identifying each of the tagged data items comprises;

calculating the distance between each search result and each tagged data item; and

determining if the calculated distance is less than a distance criterion, wherein the distance criterion is a predetermined number of lines of text;

identifying applicable tagged data items by determining whether the each of the tagged data items present in the electronic document should be associated with the one or more search results using grammatical semantic intelligence, the grammatical semantic intelligence comprising a rule that tagged data items that satisfy the proximity rule, with respect to the one or more search results, represent facts about search terms used in generating the search of the electronic document only when the search terms are proper nouns;

displaying on a user interface the one or more tagged items associated with each search result and identified as within the distance from each search result; and

removing a tag from a displayed item associated with the one or more search results by specifying in the user interface that the item should not be categorized, wherein the user interface comprises an on-object-user interface which receives a pointing action from a computer pointing device for pointing at the displayed item, the pointing action causing the generation of a menu for removing the tag in the on-object user interface.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the distance from each search result comprises the distance between a first paragraph mark and a second paragraph mark, wherein one or more of the search results are located between the first paragraph mark and the second paragraph mark within the electronic document.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more tagged items identified as within the distance from each search result are displayed by the user interface in a window separate from a window displaying content of the electronic document.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein any of the tagged items identified as within the distance from each search result are displayed at the top of the separate window and the one or more search results are displayed beneath the displayed tagged data items.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein each tagged item identified as within the distance from one or more search result is displayed adjacent to the search result in the separate window.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of determining the tagged data items present in the electronic document within a distance from each search result that comprise a subset of the tagged data items based on a search term, prior to displaying the tagged data items.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein each tagged data item is displayed as a hyperlink and each hyperlink corresponds to a location in the electronic document containing of the tagged data item.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more tagged data items belong to one or more categories of data.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the categories of data comprise people'"'"'s names, physical addresses, e-mail addresses, universal resource locators, dates, and telephone numbers.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the distance criterion is a number of alphanumeric characters.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the distance from each search result comprises a distance based on grammatical rules of a language comprising the electronic document.

12. A computer-implemented method for identifying one or more tagged data items proximate to a result of a search of an electronic document, comprising the steps of:

completing the search of the electronic document;

locating each result of the search within the electronic document;

determining if one or more of the tagged data items are present in the electronic document within a distance from each search result using a proximity rule, wherein the distance comprises a location of the one or more tagged data items relative to each search result;

identifying applicable tagged data items by determining whether the each of the tagged data items present in the electronic document should be associated with the one or more search results using grammatical semantic intelligence, the grammatical semantic intelligence comprising a rule that tagged data items that satisfy the proximity rule, with respect to the one or more search results, represent facts about search terms used in generating the search of the electronic document only when the search terms are proper nouns;

displaying on a user interface at least a portion of the electronic document using the tagged data items; and

removing a tag from a displayed item associated with the one or more search results by specifying in the user interface that the item should not be categorized, wherein the user interface comprises an on-object-user interface which receives a pointing action from a computer pointing device for pointing at the displayed item, the pointing action causing the generation of a menu for removing the tag in the on-object user interface.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the distance from each search result comprises the distance between a first paragraph mark and a second paragraph mark, wherein one or more of the search results are located between the first paragraph mark and the second paragraph mark.

14. The method of claim 12 wherein the distance from each search result comprises a distance based on grammatical rules of a language comprising the electronic document.

15. The method of claim 12 wherein the distance from each search result comprises the distance set by a user.

16. The method of claim 12 wherein the one or more tagged data items belong to one or more categories of data.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the categories of data comprise people'"'"'s names physical addresses, e-mail addresses, universal resource locators, dates, and telephone numbers.

18. A computer-readable storage device storing a set of computer-executable instructions implementing a method for displaying one or more tagged data items proximate to a result of a search of an electronic document, comprising the steps of:

locating one or more of the search results generated by the search of the electronic document;

identifying each of the tagged data items present in the electronic document within a distance from each search result using a proximity rule, wherein identifying each of the tagged data items comprises;

calculating the distance between each search result and each tagged data item; and

determining if the calculated distance is less than a distance criterion, wherein the distance criterion is a predetermined number of lines of text;

identifying applicable tagged data items by determining whether the each of the tagged data items present in the electronic document should be associated with the one or more search results using grammatical semantic intelligence, the grammatical semantic intelligence comprising a rule that tagged data items that satisfy the proximity rule, with respect to the one or more search results, represent facts about search terms used in generating the search of the electronic document only when the search terms are proper nouns;

displaying on a user interface the one or more tagged items associated with each search result and identified as within the distance from each search result, wherein the one or more tagged items identified as within the distance from each search result are displayed in a window separate from a window displaying content of the electronic document; and

removing a tag from a displayed item associated with the one or more search results by specifying in the user interface that the item should not be categorized, wherein the user interface comprises an on-object-user interface which receives a pointing action from a computer pointing device for pointing at the displayed item, the pointing action causing the generation of a menu for removing the tag in the on-object user interface.

19. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 wherein the distance from each search result comprises the distance between a first paragraph mark and a second paragraph mark, wherein one or more of the search results are located between the first paragraph mark and the second paragraph mark.

20. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 wherein the distance from each search result comprises a distance based on grammatical rules of a language comprising the electronic document.

21. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 wherein any of the tagged items identified as within the distance from each search result are displayed at the top of the separate window and the one or more search results are displayed beneath the displayed tagged data items.

22. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 wherein each tagged item identified as within the distance from one or more search result is displayed adjacent to the search result in the separate window.

23. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 further comprising the step of determining the tagged data items present in the electronic document within a distance from each search result that comprise a subset of the tagged data items based on a search term, prior to displaying the tagged data items.

24. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 wherein each tagged data item is displayed as a hyperlink and each hyperlink corresponds to a location in the electronic document containing of the tagged data item.

25. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 wherein the one or more tagged data items belong to one or more categories of data.

26. The computer-readable storage device of claim 25 wherein the categories of data comprise people'"'"'s names, physical addresses, e-mail addresses, universal resource locators, dates, and telephone numbers.