Information retrieval using category as a consideration

摘要

Category affinity may be used as a consideration in providing search results. A taxonomy of substantive categories is created and/or obtained. A corpus of document is compared with the taxonomy to determine the category(ies) with which the documents affine. A query is also compared with the taxonomy to determine the category(ies) with which the query affines. A document may receive a category score based on how well the document's category(ies) match the query's category(ies). This document score may be combined with other scores, such as a text score, a link score, and a distance score, and/or any other factors, to determine an overall relevance score. The relevance score may then be used to rank and present search results.

主权项

1. A method of providing search results in response to a query, the method comprising:
obtaining, by a computer system, access to a corpus comprising a plurality of documents; characterizing, by the computer system after the obtaining, a document of the plurality of documents by selecting one or more first categories from a hierarchal category tree that are reflected in the document and assigning in memory of the computer system the one or more first categories to the document, the hierarchal category tree comprising a taxonomy of different business categories; receiving, by the computer system after the assigning, a query; identifying, by the computer system after the receiving, one or more second categories from the hierarchal category tree that are reflected in the query; generating, by the computer system, a plurality of scores comprising
a category score quantifying how similar the one or more first categories are to the one or more second categories,a text score quantifying how frequently one or more words in the query appear in the document, anda relevance score comprising a combination of the category score and the text score made according to a mathematic formula; using, by the computer system after the generating, the relevance score to rank the document within search results corresponding to the query; and displaying the search results on a display forming part of the computing system.