Information retrieval using dynamic guided navigation

• US 9,798,806 B2
• Filed: 03/31/2008
• Issued: 10/24/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2008
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Excalibur IP, LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Inventors: Ahluwalia, Ashwinder
• Primary Examiner(s): Mofiz, Apu
• Assistant Examiner(s): HOLLAND, SHERYL L
• Application Number:
  US12/060,094
• Publication Number:
  US 20090248666A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,494 Days
• Field of Search: 707726
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3322 using system suggestions G06F16/3325 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results

Abstract

An apparatus and method for providing relevant search result and query terms are disclosed herein. Natural language processing of the documents and previous search session history are used to dynamically determine document relevance, queries relevant to search categories prior to start of a search session, and query to query correlations.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, by a computing device, a search category and a current query from a current user;

determining, by the computing device, relevance of documents comprising a corpus of documents relating to the search category;

obtaining, by the computing device, degree of interest data by users in one or more documents of the corpus of documents, the degree of interest data determined by a degree of interest data group including one or more of measuring how fast a user reads the one or more documents based on page scroll speed and average reading time based on length of the one or more documents, whether the user chose to cut and paste a portion of the document for further reading, whether the user bookmarked the one or more documents, or combinations thereof;

determining, by the computing device, documents comprising a search result and an order of the documents comprising the search result based on the determined relevance and obtained degree of interest data;

obtaining, by the computing device, direct search query terms from the users;

identifying, by the computing device, document query terms from content of the corpus of documents;

determining, by the computing device, query to query correlations from a query correlation data structure, where the determining of the query to query correlations comprises tracking query terms provided by the users in past search sessions which the users selected and where the query correlation data structure comprises, for each pair of the query terms, a measure selected from a group of measures consisting of a probability of co-occurrence in past user sessions and a degree of co-occurrence in a document of the corpus of documents;

determining, by the computing device, at least one query suggestion, the at least one query suggestion obtained from the direct search query terms, document query terms, and the query to query correlations;

tracking, by the computing device, (a) the search category and the current query specified by the current user, (b) interaction with each document clicked through from the documents comprising the search result, and (c) a query selected from the at least one query suggestion, to develop session history for both the users in the past search sessions and the current user; and

generating, by the computing device, a search results web page from the interaction with the each document and the documents comprising the search result, ordered in the determined order, the search result web page comprising the at least one query suggestion.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying document query terms comprising natural language processing the corpus of documents to extract the document query terms.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the relevance of the documents comprises determining statistic relevance based on the content of each of the documents.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the search category comprises a product category.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the search category comprises a question and answer category.

6. A system comprising:

a processor;

a storage medium for tangibly storing thereon program logic for execution by the processor, the stored program logic comprising;

query information logic executed by the processor for storing occurrence and frequency data relating to each of a plurality of query terms from search queries specified by a plurality of users and natural language processing of content of a corpus of documents;

query correlation logic executed by the processor for storing correlation data for each pair of the plurality of query terms from query term content in the content of the corpus of documents and degree of query term pairings specified by the plurality of users, where the query correlation logic stores, for each pair of the plurality of query terms, a measure selected from a group of measures consisting of a probability of co-occurrence in past user sessions and a degree of co-occurrence in a document of the corpus of documents;

interest obtaining logic executed by the processor for obtaining degree of interest data by the plurality of users in one or more documents of the corpus of documents, the degree of interest data determined by a degree of interest data group including one or more of measuring how fast a user reads the one or more documents based on page scroll speed and average reading time based on length of the one or more documents, whether the user chose to cut and paste a portion of the document for further reading, whether the user bookmarked the one or more documents, or combinations thereof;

determining logic executed by the processor for determining at least one query suggestion to provide with a search result, the at least one query suggestion obtained from the search queries specified by the plurality of users, the search queries from the natural language processing of the content, and the correlation data;

tracking logic executed by the processor for tracking (a) the search category and the current query specified by the current user, (b) interaction with each document clicked through from the documents comprising the search result, and (c) a query selected from the at least one query suggestion, to develop session history for both the users in the past search sessions and the current user; and

search results web page generating logic executed by the processor for generating a search results web page from the interaction with the each document the obtained degree of interest data, and the documents comprising the search result, ordered in the determined order, the search result web page comprising the at least one query suggestion.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the query information logic is further configured to store, for each of the plurality of query terms, a number of occurrence of the respective query term in past user sessions, a number of occurrence of the respective query term in the corpus of documents, or a probability of occurrence of the respective query term in a recent time period of the past user sessions.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein the corpus of documents relates to documents associated with the search category.

9. The system of claim 6, further comprising a natural language processing engine operable to provide data for the query information logic and the query correlation logic.

10. A system comprising:

a processor;

a storage medium for tangibly storing thereon program logic for execution by the processor, the stored program logic comprising;

document identifying logic executed by the processor for identifying documents relating to a search category;

document analyzing logic executed by the processor for analyzing the documents to determine internal statistical content;

interestingness tracking logic executed by the processor for tracking users'"'"' interestingness data for the documents, where the tracking of the users'"'"' interestingness data comprises tracking user interaction with each document clicked through from a search result page, the tracking of the user interaction with each document comprising determining a user interaction data group including one or more of measuring how fast a user reads the each document based on page scroll speed and average reading time based on length of the each document, whether the user chose to cut and paste a portion of the document for further reading, whether the user bookmarked the each document, or combinations thereof;

first query term identifying logic executed by the processor for identifying first query terms from the documents;

second query term tracking logic executed by the processor for tracking second query terms specified by the users;

interest tracking logic executed by the processor for tracking users'"'"' indication of interest in pairs of query terms;

query suggestion tracking logic executed by the processor for tracking a query suggestion selected from a plurality of query suggestions and obtained from the first query terms, the second query terms, and the users'"'"' indication of interest in pairs of query terms;

search results web page generating logic executed by the processor for generating the search results page from the interaction with the each document and documents comprising a search result in the identified documents, ordered in a determined order, wherein the search results page comprises the plurality of query suggestions.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising logic operable to combine the internal statistical content and users interestingness data to select documents of relevance and order of presentation of the selected documents in response to receiving the current query.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein a first weight is applied to the internal statistical content and a second weight is applied to the users'"'"' interestingness data.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the first query terms are identified using natural language processing.

14. The system of claim 10, further comprising logic operable to provide a query database with the first query terms and the second query terms.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising logic operable to generate at least one query suggestion from the query database in response to the current query.

16. The system of claim 10, further comprising logic operable to periodically update the documents relating to the search category.

17. The system of claim 10, wherein the users indication of interest in pairs of query terms is determined from tracking each of the second query terms specified by each of the users with the respective user'"'"'s indication of interest in at least one query suggestion during the respective search session.

18. The system of claim 10, wherein the first and second query terms are different from each other.

19. The system of claim 10, wherein the second query terms comprise search terms used to initiate search sessions.

20. The system of claim 10, further comprising logic operable to determine a category for each of the second query terms, wherein the category can be the search category.