Query language

• US 8,954,426 B2
• Filed: 02/17/2006
• Issued: 02/10/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 02/17/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Hogue, Andrew W., Rohde, Douglas L. T.
• Primary Examiner(s): KUDDUS, DANIEL A
• Application Number:
  US11/356,679
• Publication Number:
  US 20070198480A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,280 Days
• Field of Search: 707/728, 707/803, 707/999.003
• US Class Current: 707/728
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/80 of semi-structured data, e.g. markup language structured data such as SGML, XML or HTML content-based retrieval of web data G06F16/95

Abstract

A fact repository supports searches of facts relevant to search queries comprising keywords and phrases. A service engine retrieves the objects that are associated with facts relevant to a query. The query language described is designed for use with such a repository of facts and searches both the attributes of facts and the values of the attributes.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method of searching a fact repository, the method comprising:

at a computer system including one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs, the one or more processors executing the one or more programs to perform the operations of;

receiving at the fact repository a search query provided by a user from a single generic search query box of a web based search engine configured to perform both web search queries in web documents and fact repository queries in the fact repository, the query including a restriction operator and a plurality of search terms, wherein the restriction operator is selected from a group consisting of;

a fact restriction operator that causes a single fact to be searched for the search terms, wherein the plurality of search terms need not all appear in a single field, and a field restriction operator that causes any single unspecified field of a fact to be searched for all of the search terms, wherein the fact repository includes objects and facts extracted from unstructured documents or web pages, wherein each of the objects represents an entity and includes a plurality of facts that describe the entity, and each of the facts includes a plurality of fields, including attribute and value fields and one or more metrics, wherein the one or more metrics include a confidence level that indicates likelihood that the fact is correct and an importance level that indicates relevance of the fact to the object, compared to other facts for the same object;

performing the search query in the fact repository by processing the plurality of facts in the fact repository to determine which of the plurality of facts are relevant to the search query and satisfy the restriction operator; and

returning, from the fact repository, at least one object with at least one fact that is relevant to the search query and satisfies the restriction operator.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein processing further comprises processing fields other than those specified by the restriction operator in the plurality of facts to determine which of the plurality of facts are relevant to the search query.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein returning further comprises:

returning an object having a fact that contains a term of the search query in an attribute of the fact, where the search query specifies that the term must be contained in an attribute.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein returning further comprises:

returning an object having a fact that contains a term of the search query in a value of the fact, where the search query specifies that the term must be contained in a value.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein returning further comprises:

returning an object whose facts contain a first term of the search query in a first fact and a second term of the search query in a second fact.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein returning further comprises:

returning an object having a fact that contains both a first term of the search query and a second term of the search query, where the search query specifies that the first and second terms must be in the fact.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein returning further comprises:

returning an object whose facts contain a first term of the search query in a first fact and a second term of the search query in a second fact, where the search query specifies that the first and second terms must be in different facts.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein returning further comprises:

returning an object whose facts contain a first term of the search query as an attribute name of a first fact and a second term of the search query as a value of the first fact, where the search query specifies that the first and second terms must be an attribute and value pair in the first fact.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the search query further comprises receiving the search query as part of an http request.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein processing the plurality of facts to determine which are relevant to the search query further comprises determining which attributes and values in the plurality of facts match terms of the search query.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein returning objects whose facts are relevant to the search query further comprises determining which objects to return in accordance with logical operators in the search query.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising ranking returned objects by relevance and displaying portions of at least two of the returned objects in accordance with their rankings.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein a search query of the format:

[A B]

requires that terms A and B are in a respective fact.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein a search query of the format:

[A;

B]

requires that terms A and B, respectively, match an attribute and value pair of a fact.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the receiving further comprises, when the search terms include a first and second search term, matching the first term in a first field of the fact and matching the second term in a second field of the fact.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the objects whose at least one fact is relevant to the search query includes at least one fact that contains a term of the search query in at least one of an attribute and a value of the fact and at least one other fact that does not contain the terms of the search query in at least one of an attribute and a value of the fact.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising further searching the returned objects, to further refine search results.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising reviewing a source value in the plurality of facts in the fact repository to determine which of the plurality of facts are relevant to the search query, each of the plurality of facts including an attribute, a value, and a source value.

20. The method of claim 1, further comprising reviewing values in a fact of the plurality of facts in the fact repository other than those specified by the restriction operator to determine which of the plurality of facts are relevant to the search query, each of the plurality of facts including an attribute, a value, and the additional value.

17. A system to allow a user to search a fact repository, comprising:

one or more processors;

memory; and

one or more programs stored in the memory, the one or more programs comprising instructions to;

receive at the fact repository a search query provided by a user from a single generic search query box of a web based search engine configured to perform both web search queries in web documents and fact repository queries in the fact repository, the query including a restriction operator and a plurality of search terms, wherein the restriction operator is selected from a group consisting of;

a fact restriction operator that causes a single fact to be searched for the search terms, wherein the plurality of search terms need not all appear in a single field, and a field restriction operator that causes any single unspecified field of a fact to be searched for all of the search terms, wherein the fact repository includes objects and facts extracted from unstructured documents or web pages, wherein each of the objects represents an entity and includes a plurality of facts that describe the entity, and each of the facts includes a plurality of fields, including attribute and value fields and one or more metrics, wherein the one or more metrics include a confidence level that indicates likelihood that the fact is correct and an importance level that indicates relevance of the fact to the object, compared to other facts for the same object;

performing the search query in the fact repository by processing the plurality of facts in the fact repository to determine which of the plurality of facts are relevant to the search query and satisfy the restriction operator; and

return, from the fact repository, at least one object with at least one fact that is relevant to the search query and satisfies the restriction operator.

21. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing one or more programs configured for execution by a computer, the one or more programs comprising instructions to:

receive at the fact repository a search query provided by a user from a single generic search query box of a web based search engine configured to perform both web search queries in web documents and fact repository queries in the fact repository, the query including a restriction operator and a plurality of search terms, wherein the restriction operator is selected from the group consisting of;

a fact restriction operator that causes a single fact to be searched for the search terms, wherein the plurality of search terms need not all appear in a single field, and a field restriction operator that causes any single unspecified field of a fact to be searched for all of the search terms, wherein the fact repository includes objects and facts extracted from unstructured documents or web pages, wherein each of the objects represents an entity and includes a plurality of facts that describe the entity, and each of the facts includes a plurality of fields, including attribute and value fields and one or more metrics, wherein the one or more metrics include a confidence level that indicates likelihood that the fact is correct and an importance level that indicates relevance of the fact to the object, compared to other facts for the same object;

perform the search query in the fact repository by processing the plurality of facts in the fact repository to determine which of the plurality of facts are relevant to the search query and satisfy the restriction operator; and

return, from the fact repository, at least one object with at least one fact that is relevant to the search query and satisfies the restriction operator.