Determining related terms based on link annotations of documents belonging to search result sets

• US 7,711,732 B2
• Filed: 04/21/2006
• Issued: 05/04/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/21/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Pedersen, Jan, Shemtov, Hadar
• Primary Examiner(s): Ali; Mohammad
• Assistant Examiner(s): Smith; Brannon W
• Application Number:
  US11/408,550
• Publication Number:
  US 20070250498A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,474 Days
• Field of Search: 707/5, 707/999.005, 707/726, 707/765, 707/E17.014
• US Class Current: 707/726
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3325 Reformulation based on results of preceding query
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Techniques for automatically focusing searches conducted by a search engine are provided. According to one aspect, revised query terms are automatically generated based on text in links that are in incoming (and/or outgoing) link lists associated with documents that are referenced in initial search results generated based on initial query terms. For example, some of the phrases that appear in incoming (and/or outgoing) links associated with a result document may be selected. The selected phrases may be added to the initial query terms to generate revised query terms. These revised query terms may be submitted automatically to the search engine in order to produce a more focused list of revised search results. This process may be performed repeatedly, each iteration revising query terms generated by the previous iteration, until specified criteria are satisfied, at which point the final revised search results may be presented to a user.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving first query terms from a user;

automatically selecting, based at least in part on the first query terms, and from among a set of documents, first documents;

automatically generating second query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within the first documents;

automatically selecting, based at least in part on the second query terms, and from among the set of documents, second documents;

wherein the first documents differ from the second documents;

automatically generating third query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within the second documents, and not based on any input from said user;

and automatically selecting, based at least in part on the third query terms, and from among the set of documents, third documents;

wherein the third documents differ from the first documents and the second documents;

determining a first number that is a number of documents in an intersection of (a) a set consisting of the first documents and (b) a set consisting of the second documents;

determining a second number that is the first number divided by a number of documents in the set consisting of the second documents;

determining whether the second number is at least as great as a specified percentage;

and in response to determining that the second number is not at least as great as the specified percentage, automatically generating the third query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within the second documents;

wherein the step of generating the third query terms is performed by one or more computing devices;

and wherein said first and second documents are not displayed to said user.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending at least some documents in the third set of documents toward the user in response to the user'"'"'s submission of the first query terms.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending at least some search results in the first set of search results toward the user along with the third query terms in response to the user'"'"'s submission of the first query terms.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically generating the second query terms comprises automatically generating the second query terms based at least in part on hover text.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically generating the second query terms comprises automatically generating the second query terms based only on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within documents that are in a top “

N”

subset of the first documents.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically generating the second query terms comprises automatically generating the second query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is (a) contained within links that refer to documents that are in a top “

N”

subset of the first documents but (b) not contained in any document in the top “

N”

subset of the first documents.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on whether text of that particular link occurs within a grammatical subject of a sentence in which that particular link occurs.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on whether text of that particular link occurs within at least one of;

a) a title of a document in which that particular link occurs;

and b) a header within a document in which that particular link occurs.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on whether text of that particular link is in at least one of;

a) a bold font;

b) an italicized font;

and c) an emphasized font.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on a number of times that text of that particular link occurs within the links that occur within the first documents.

11. A volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform steps comprising:

receiving first query terms from a user;

automatically selecting, based at least in part on the first query terms, and from among a set of documents, first documents;

automatically generating second query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within the first documents;

automatically selecting, based at least in part on the second query terms, and from among the set of documents, second documents;

wherein the first documents differ from the second documents;

automatically generating third query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within the second documents, and not based on any input from said user;

and automatically selecting, based at least in part on the third query terms, and from among the set of documents, third documents;

wherein the third documents differ from the first documents and the second documents;

determining a first number that is a number of documents in an intersection of (a) a set consisting of the first documents and (b) a set consisting of the second documents;

determining a second number that is the first number divided by a number of documents in the set consisting of the second documents;

determining whether the second number is at least as great as a specified percentage;

and in response to determining that the second number is not at least as great as the specified percentage, automatically generating the third query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within the second documents;

wherein said first and second documents are not displayed to said user.

12. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the steps further comprise:

sending at least some documents in the third set of documents toward the user in response to the user'"'"'s submission of the first query terms.

13. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the steps further comprise:

sending at least some search results in the first set of search results toward the user along with the third query terms in response to the user'"'"'s submission of the first query terms.

14. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein automatically generating the second query terms comprises automatically generating the second query terms based at least in part on hover text.

15. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein automatically generating the second query terms comprises automatically generating the second query terms based only on anchor text that is contained within links that occur within documents that are in a top “

N”

subset of the first documents.

16. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein automatically generating the second query terms comprises automatically generating the second query terms based at least in part on anchor text that is (a) contained within links that refer to documents that are in a top “

N”

subset of the first documents but (b) not contained in any document in the top “

N”

subset of the first documents.

17. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the steps further comprise:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on whether text of that particular link occurs within a grammatical subject of a sentence in which that particular link occurs.

18. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the steps further comprise:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on whether text of that particular link occurs within at least one of;

a) a title of a document in which that particular link occurs;

and b) a header within a document in which that particular link occurs.

19. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the steps further comprise:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on whether text of that particular link is in at least one of;

a) a bold font;

b) an italicized font;

and c) an emphasized font.

20. The volatile or non-volatile computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the steps further comprise:

associating, with each particular link in the links that occur within the first documents, a weight that is based on a number of times that text of that particular link occurs within the links that occur within the first documents.