Customizable ordering of search results and predictive query generation

• US 20070078828A1
• Filed: 10/05/2005
• Published: 04/05/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/05/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Parikh, Jignashu, Kapur, Shyam, Harish, J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,921,109 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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

In a computerized search system, a document corpus is searched according to a query and results of the search are presentable as an ordered search result set comprising one or more search hits, a search hit being a document of the document corpus or reference thereto. Based on content of the search result set, a number of suggested queries and/or parameter options are presented to a querier, thereby allowing the querier to select a suggested query and/or provide values for the parameters and those selections can be used to reorder the hits of the search result set. The particular suggested queries and/or parameters presented depend on the page elements of the search result set'"'"'s documents and their categorization. The categorization might be done using concept networks.

Claims

1. A computerized search method for searching a document corpus according to a query and communicating results of the search as a search result set comprising one or more search hits, a search hit being a document of the document corpus or reference thereto, the method comprising:

receiving from a client system a query from a querier;

performing a document corpus search to identify a suitable search result set for the query;

identifying, for at least some of the search hits, page elements of those documents and one or more categorizations of those identified page elements;

outputting the search result set to the client system in response to the query;

generating a set of slider parameters, wherein each slider parameter comprises a setting to vary search hit order according to a slider value provided by the querier; and

sending the set of slider parameters to the client system in a form that they client system can use to generate a presentation to the querier for inputting one or more slider value for use by the client system in ordering the search hits according to the one or more slider values.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying is done for a plurality of documents in the document corpus in advance of queries being generated.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the querier is one of a human or a computer.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

presenting, at the client system, the search result set in a first order;

presenting, at the client system, a set of sliders corresponding to the set of slider parameters wherein the sliders depend upon categorization of page elements of the search result set;

accepting, at the client system, a slider values for the set of sliders; and

reordering, at the client system, the search result set into a second order according to the accepted slider values; and

presenting, at the client system, the search result set in the second order.

5. A search system comprising:

a client system configured to receive a query from a querier and present search results to the querier in a results order; and

a search engine configured to the query from the client system and perform a corpus search to identify documents relevant to the query and configured to generate a set of slider parameters specific to the identified documents.

6. A computerized search method using a search engine and one or more search clients, wherein the search engine comprises storage for an index of documents in a document corpus and logic for generating a search result set comprising one or more search hits responsive to a query received from the one or more search clients, and at least some of the one or more search clients comprise storage for the search result set and logic for presenting at least a portion of the search result set in a determined order, the method comprising:

analyzing a plurality of analyzed documents in the document corpus to identify a plurality of page elements in each of the analyzed documents wherein the page elements are identified according to a categorization;

receiving from a client system a query from a querier;

performing a document corpus search to identify a suitable search result set for the query;

identifying, for at least some of the search hits in the search result set, page elements present in the documents of the search result set;

outputting the search result set to the client system in response to the query;

generating a content presentation to the querier of the search result set with search hits ordered according to a first document order;

generating a suggestion presentation to the querier, wherein the suggestion presentation comprises suggested queries for each of at least some of the page elements of documents in the search result set and the suggested queries are determined from page elements and categorization of those page elements; and

presenting the content presentation and the suggestion presentation using the client system, wherein the query is in the suggestion presentation are different for at least two distinct content presentations.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

receiving, at the client system, a selection preference indicating a preferred suggested query from the suggestion presentation; and

reordering the search result set according to a second document order wherein the second document order is distinct from the first document order and is dependent upon the selection preference.

8. A computerized search method for searching a document corpus according to a query and communicating results of the search as a search result set comprising one or more search hits, a search hit being a document of the document corpus or reference thereto, the method comprising:

receiving from a client system a query from a querier;

performing a document corpus search to identify a suitable search result set for the query;

identifying, for the query, one or more possible categorizations for the query;

when more than one categorization is possible, providing the client system with a list of the more than one categorization and receiving an indication of a selected categorization from the client system;

using the identified or selected categorization to determine predicted queries for queries of the identified or selected categorization; and

providing the predicted queries to the client system for presentation to the querier.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the identifying of a categorization is done using a concept network.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the querier is one of a human or a computer.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

presenting, at the client system, the search result set in a first order;

presenting, at the client system, a set of sliders corresponding to the set of slider parameters wherein the sliders depend upon categorization of page elements of the search result set;

accepting, at the client system, a slider values for the set of sliders; and

reordering, at the client system, the search result set into a second order according to the accepted slider values; and

presenting, at the client system, the search result set in the second order.

12. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

for each of the predicted queries, generating a label and a query string;

providing at least the labels to the client system for presentation to the querier; and

upon accepting a selection of a label by the querier, initiating a search using the query string for the predicted query selected by the querier by label.