Retrieval of relevant information categories

Patent 6704729 Issued on March 9, 2004. Estimated Expiration Date:

May 19, 2020. Estimated Expiration Date is calculated based on simple USPTO term provisions. It does not account for terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, failure to pay maintenance fees, or other factors which might affect the term of a patent.

Abstract Claims Description Full Text

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Inventors

Assignee

Microsoft Corporation

Application

No. 09/575481 filed on 05/19/2000

US Classes:

707/5Query augmenting and refining (e.g., inexact access)

Examiners

Primary: Robinson, Greta
Assistant: Rayyan, Susan

Attorney, Agent or Firm

Woodcock Washburn LLP

International Class

G06F 17/30 (20060101)

Abstract

Large stores of information are often organized in a hierarchical taxonomy to aid a search and retrieval of the information. The hierarchical taxonomy generally consists of related categories of information, called "nodes," that each may contain information relevant to the search. Each node is addressable according to its path in the hierarchical taxonomy. In information stores where the number of nodes having relevant information is extremely large, such as the Internet, providing a cohesive, intelligent, and organized display of the search results becomes extremely important to the success of a user traversing the store to find relevant information. The invention provides such search results by ranking each node of the taxonomy to determine which nodes are most likely to be relevant to the search request. The invention then creates a conceptually-related "cluster" of nodes by selecting a relevant "seed" node and relevant nodes related to the "seed" node.