METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR INFORMATION DISCOVERY AND TEXT ANALYSIS

• US 20090319518A1
• Filed: 07/10/2009
• Published: 12/24/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/10/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meltwater News US, Inc. (Meltwater NV)
• Original Assignee: Sysomos Incorporated (Nasdaq, Inc.)
• Inventors: Koudas, Nick, Bansal, Nilesh
• Granted Patent: US 9,256,667 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

A method for searching text sources including temporally-ordered data objects, such as a blog, is provided including the steps of: (i) providing access to text sources, each text source including temporally-ordered data objects; (ii) obtaining or generating a search query based on terms and time intervals; (iii) obtaining or generating time data associated with the data objects; (iv) identifying data objects based on the search query; and (v) generating popularity curves based on the frequency of data objects corresponding to one or more of the search terms in the one or more time intervals. A system and computer program for text source searching is also provided.

Claims

1. A method for searching one or more text sources including temporally-ordered data objects characterized in that it comprises:

providing access to one or more text sources, each text source including one or more temporally-ordered data objects;

obtaining or generating a search query based on one or more terms and one or more time intervals;

obtaining or generating time data associated with the data objects;

identifying one or more data objects based on the search query; and

generating one or more popularity curves based on the frequency of data objects corresponding to one or more of the search terms in the one or more time intervals.

2. The method of claim 1 characterized in that it comprises the further steps of:

analysing data objects within the one or more popularity curves; and

defining one or more data objects as data objects of interest based on fluctuations in the popularity curve indicating a high frequency of data objects corresponding to one or more search terms.

3. The method of claim 2 characterized in that it comprises the further step of generating one or more additional terms associated with the data objects of interest.

4. The method of claim 1 characterized in that it further comprises generating and submitting a search query automatically based upon one or more specific data objects, or one or more obtained terms, and one or more terms generated by a prior search query.

5. The method of claim 4 characterized in that the generating of the search query based upon one or more specific data objects further comprises extracting query terms from the one or more specified data objects by way of an algorithmic methodology.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising ranking the data objects and additional terms associated with data objects of interest, characterized in that the ranking orders the data objects and additional terms associated with the data objects of interest in accordance with the authoritative nature of the data object as indicated by the data associated with the data object establishing that a data object is frequently referenced by users.

7. The method of claim 1 characterized in that the method further comprises including in the search query one or more of:

one or more geographical search terms, or one or more demographic search terms.

8. The method of claim 1 characterized in that the one or more popularity curves are based upon sentiment analysis derived through assigning user sentiment data to each data object, either positive or negative, by defining or obtaining positive or negative terms relating to the data objects, inferring the sentiment data from the presence or absence of such positive or negative terms, and based on such sentiment data defining additional information for a search query.

9. The method of claim 1 characterized in that the popularity curve fluctuations are drill down and roll-up capable.

10. A system for searching a text source including temporally-ordered data objects characterized in that it comprises:

a computer;

a search term definition utility linked to the computer or loaded on the computer;

wherein the computer is connected via an inter-connected network of computers to one or more text sources including temporally-ordered data objects;

wherein the system, by means of cooperation of the search term definition utility and the computer, is operable to;

provide access to one or more text sources, each text source including one or more temporally-ordered data objects;

obtain or generate a search query based on one or more terms and one or more time intervals;

obtain or generate time data associated with the data objects;

identify one or more data objects based on the search query; and

generate one or more popularity curves based on the frequency of data objects corresponding to one or more of the search terms in the one or more time intervals.

11. The system of claim 10 characterized in that the system is operable to:

analyse data objects within the one or more popularity curves; and

define one or more data objects as data objects of interest based on fluctuations in the one or more popularity curves indicating a high frequency of data objects corresponding to one or more search terms.

12. The system of claim 11 characterized in that the system is further operable to generate one or more additional terms associated with the data objects of interest.

13. The system of claim 10 characterized in that the system further comprises a means for:

generating and submitting a search query automatically based upon one or more specific data objects;

one or more obtained terms;

or one or more terms generated by a prior search query.

14. The system of claim 10 characterized in that the system is operable to generate a search query based upon an algorithmic methodology for the extraction of query terms from the one or more specified data objects.

15. The system of claim 11 wherein the search term definition utility incorporates or is linked to a means for ranking of the data objects and of additional terms associated with data objects of interest and wherein the ranking of data objects and of additional terms associated with data objects of interest is achieved by the search term definition utility being operable to obtain data associated with the data object establishing that the data object is frequently referenced by users and to utilize such data for the purpose of providing an authoritative ranking based on the authoritative nature of the data object as indicated by the data.

16. The system of claim 10 characterized in that the one or more popularity curves are generated based upon sentiment analysis derived through the search term definition utility that includes a means of assigning user sentiment data to each data object, either positive or negative, and by defining or obtaining positive or negative terms relating to the data objects the search term definition utility infers the sentiment data from the presence or absence of such positive or negative terms, and based on such sentiment data defines additional information for a search query.

17. The system of claim 10 characterized in that the search term definition utility includes or is linked to a means of rendering the popularity curve drill down and roll-up capable.

18. The system of claim 10 characterized in that the system is operable to display one or more of:

a graph, ranked terms, additional terms associated with the data objects, a tooltip, or a popularity curve, and is operable to display a graph based upon one or more additional terms associated with the data objects whereby said additional terms are plotted graphically to indicate one or more of;

correlations between the additional terms, or sentiment analysis.

19. The system of claim 10 characterized in that the search term definition utility is a crawler operable to fetch and parse a data feed automatically at a regular time interval and wherein the additional terms associated with the data objects are utilized to generate search query terms.

20. A computer program product, characterized in that it comprises computer instructions made available to a computer that are operable to define a search term definition utility, wherein the computer is linked to one or more text sources including temporally-ordered data objects, wherein the computer program product, by means of cooperation of the search term definition utility and the computer is characterized in that the search term definition utility is operable to:

provide access to one or more text sources, each text source including one or more temporally-ordered data objects, obtain or generate one or more time intervals;

obtain or generate a search query based on one or more terms and one or more time intervals;

identify one or more data objects based on the search query; and

generate one or more popularity curves based on the frequency of data objects corresponding to one or more of the search terms in the one or more time intervals.