TECHNIQUES FOR SEARCHING FUTURE EVENTS

• US 20080040321A1
• Filed: 08/11/2006
• Published: 02/14/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/11/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: University of Chile, Verizon Media, Inc. (Verizon Communications Inc.), Yahoo Assets LLC
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Baeza-Yates, Ricardo Alberto
• Granted Patent: US 7,668,813 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2477 Temporal data queries
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

A future retrieval system operable to enable searching for future events associated with a set of documents includes at least one memory device configured to store a database of the documents. The system identifies future events associated with the documents and generates temporal data and a confidence value for each future event. The confidence value represents a likelihood of occurrence for the corresponding future event. The system evaluates text associated with the future events to generate event metadata, and indexes the documents with the associated event metadata, temporal data, and confidence levels in the database. The system generates search results corresponding to selected ones of the documents in the database in response to queries which include references to future times, and ranks the search results in accordance with the confidence values associated with the future events associated with the selected documents.

Claims

1. A future retrieval system operable to enable searching for future events associated with a set of documents, comprising:

at least one memory device configured to store a database which includes the documents; and

at least one computing device configured to;

identify future events associated with the documents and to generate temporal data and a confidence value for each future event, the confidence value representing a likelihood of occurrence for the corresponding future event;

evaluate text associated with the future events to generate event metadata, and to index the documents with the associated event metadata, temporal data, and confidence values in the database; and

generate search results corresponding to selected ones of the documents in the database in response to queries which include references to future times, and to rank the search results in accordance with the confidence values associated with the future events associated with the selected documents.

2. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein the at least one computing device is further configured to generate the confidence values with reference to at least some of the text associated with the future events.

3. The future retrieval system of claim 2 wherein the at least one computing device is configured to generate the confidence values with reference to at least some of the text associated with the future events using a natural language processing technique to determine a mood for each of the future events.

4. The future retrieval system of claim 2 wherein the at least one computing device is configured to generate the confidence values with reference to at least some of the text associated with the future events by identifying at least one of will, must, should, could, and would in the text.

5. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein the temporal data comprises any of a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century, and a millennium.

6. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein selected ones of the queries include one or more keywords, the at least one computing device further being configured to rank the search results in accordance with relevance of the selected documents with respect to the one or more keywords.

7. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein selected ones of the queries include only the references to the future times, and the selected documents corresponding to the search results include any of the documents referring to the future times.

8. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein first ones of the documents each have a plurality of the future events associated therewith, the at least one computing device further being configured to generate rank values for each of the first documents with reference to a most likely to occur one of the plurality of associated future events.

9. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein the temporal data for each future event comprises a time segment, each future event comprising a tuple of the corresponding time segment and confidence value.

10. The future retrieval system of claim 9 wherein the at least one computing device is further configured to generate a ranking value for a first one of the selected documents in response to a first query identifying a time segment, the ranking value being determined with reference to a maximum confidence value associated with the first selected document restricted to the time segment.

11. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein a first one of the selected documents has a plurality of the future events associated therewith, and wherein the at least one computing device is further configured to generate a ranking value for the first selected document in response to a first query identifying a time segment, the ranking value being determined with reference to an intersection of the time segment with a curve representing the plurality of future events associated with the first selected document.

12. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein a first one of the documents has a plurality of the future events associated therewith, and wherein the at least one computing device is further configured to divide the first document into a plurality of text passages, each of the text passages being associated with only one of the plurality of future events associated with the first document.

13. The future retrieval system of claim 1 wherein the at least one computing device is further configured to identify a text scope for each of the future events, the text scope corresponding to a subset of the document with which the corresponding future event is associated.

14. A computer-implemented method for enabling a user to search for future events associated with a plurality of documents, comprising:

presenting a search interface with which the user may generate a query which includes a reference to a future time; and

presenting a results interface which includes search results corresponding to selected ones of the documents in response to the query, the search results being ranked in accordance with confidence values associated with future events associated with the selected documents, each confidence value representing a likelihood of occurrence for the associated future event.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the wherein the reference to the future time comprises any of a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century, and a millennium.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein the query further includes one or more keywords, and wherein the search results are also ranked in accordance with relevance of the selected documents with respect to the one or more keywords.

17. The method of claim 14 wherein the query includes only the reference to the future time, and the selected documents corresponding to the search results include any of the documents referring to the future time.

18. A computer program product for enabling a user to search for future events associated with a plurality of documents comprising at least one computer-readable medium having computer program instructions stored therein which are operable to cause at least one computing device to:

present a search interface with which the user may generate a query which includes a reference to a future time; and

present a results interface which includes search results corresponding to selected ones of the documents in response to the query, the search results being ranked in accordance with confidence values associated with future events associated with the selected documents, each confidence value representing a likelihood of occurrence for the associated future event.

19. At least one computer-readable medium having a database stored therein representing a plurality of documents, selected ones of the documents having future events associated therewith, each selected document corresponding to a database record in the database which includes temporal data and a confidence value for each associated future event, each confidence value representing a likelihood of occurrence for the corresponding future event, wherein the database records associated with the selected documents are configured for use in generating search results in response to queries which include references to future times, the search results being ranked in accordance with the confidence values.