Method of clustering electronic documents in response to a search query

Claim 1

A method for clustering electronic documents in response to a search query, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a first set of electronic documents, each containing at least one occurrence of a first keyword from the search query; collecting a second set of electronic documents each containing at least one occurrence of a second keyword from the search query; combining said first set of electronic documents and said second set of electronic documents to create a collection of electronic documents, each electronic document in said collection containing at least one occurrence of a keyword from the search query; analyzing each electronic document in said collection to determine a content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said keywords from the search query; comparing content characteristics of each document in said collection of electronic documents to content characteristics of other documents in said collection; and creating a plurality of clusters of electronic documents, at least one cluster including at least two of said electronic documents in said collection of documents, wherein in a given cluster the electronic documents have overlapping content beyond a commonality of keywords from the search query.

Claim 2

A method for clustering electronic documents in response to a search query, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a first set of electronic documents, each containing at least one occurrence of a first keyword from the search query; collecting a second set of electronic documents each containing at least one occurrence of a second keyword from the search query; combining said first set of electronic documents and said second set of electronic documents to create a collection of electronic documents, each electronic document in said collection containing at least one occurrence of a keyword from the search query; analyzing each electronic document in said collection to determine a content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said keywords from the search query; comparing content characteristics of each document in said collection of electronic documents to content characteristics of other documents in said collection; and creating a plurality of clusters of electronic documents, at least one cluster including at least two of said electronic documents in said collection of documents, wherein in a given cluster the electronic documents have overlapping content beyond a commonality of keywords from the search query.

Claim 4

A method for finding responses to a search query that comprises a plurality of keywords, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents, each document containing at least one of said plurality of keywords; analyzing each document in said set to determine a content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said plurality of keywords in that document; comparing a content characteristic associated with a document in the set against the content characteristic of other documents in said set and determining a level of similarity of content characteristic for each pair of documents compared; and providing as query responses those document pairs having a level of similarity of content characteristic determined to be greater than a predetermined threshold.

Claim 5

A method for finding responses to a search query that comprises a plurality of keywords, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents, each document containing at least one of said plurality of keywords; analyzing each document in said set to determine a content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said plurality of keywords in that document; comparing a content characteristic associated with a document in the set against the content characteristic of other documents in said set and determining a level of similarity of content characteristic for each pair of documents compared; and providing as query responses those document pairs having a level of similarity of content characteristic determined to be greater than a predetermined threshold.

Claim 8

A method for finding responses to a search query that comprises a plurality of keywords, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents, each document containing at least one of said plurality of keywords; for each document in said set, creating a list of terms appearing within a specified distance from one keyword found in the document where each term has associated therewith a ratio of number of appearances in the collection of documents that falls within a predetermined range; comparing the list of terms generated for each document to discover pairs of lists having commonality exceeding a first threshold; and presenting as responses to the search query document pairs corresponding to those pairs of lists determined to have commonality exceeding said first threshold.

Claim 9

A method for finding responses to a search query that comprises a plurality of keywords, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents, each document containing at least one of said plurality of keywords; for each document in said set, creating a list of terms appearing within a specified distance from one keyword found in the document where each term has associated therewith a ratio of number of appearances in the collection of documents that falls within a predetermined range; comparing the list of terms generated for each document to discover pairs of lists having commonality exceeding a first threshold; and presenting as responses to the search query document pairs corresponding to those pairs of lists determined to have commonality exceeding said first threshold.

Claim 18

A method for obtaining responses to a search query containing a plurality of keywords to a universe of electronic documents where the responses are split across documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents out of said universe of documents wherein each document matches at least one of the plurality of keywords; determining similarity between pairs of documents within said set of documents to be able to assign a similarity score to each document pair; creating document clusters using similarity scores assigned to respective document pairs; ranking the created document clusters; and presenting the ranked document clusters as responses to the search query.

Claim 19

A method for obtaining responses to a search query containing a plurality of keywords to a universe of electronic documents where the responses are split across documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents out of said universe of documents wherein each document matches at least one of the plurality of keywords; determining similarity between pairs of documents within said set of documents to be able to assign a similarity score to each document pair; creating document clusters using similarity scores assigned to respective document pairs; ranking the created document clusters; and presenting the ranked document clusters as responses to the search query.

Claim 22

A method for providing responses to a search query on the worldwide web where the responses are split across electronic documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents, each document containing at least one of a plurality of keywords from the search query; analyzing each document in said set to determine a content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said plurality of keywords in that document; comparing a content characteristic associated with a document in the set against the content characteristic of other documents in said set and determining a level of similarity of content characteristic for each pair of documents compared; and providing as query responses URLs for those document pairs having a level of similarity of content characteristic determined to be greater than a predetermined threshold.

Claim 23

A method for providing responses to a search query on the worldwide web where the responses are split across electronic documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of documents, each document containing at least one of a plurality of keywords from the search query; analyzing each document in said set to determine a content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said plurality of keywords in that document; comparing a content characteristic associated with a document in the set against the content characteristic of other documents in said set and determining a level of similarity of content characteristic for each pair of documents compared; and providing as query responses URLs for those document pairs having a level of similarity of content characteristic determined to be greater than a predetermined threshold.

Claim 26

A method for finding responses to a search query directed to a universe of documents including a collection of structured documents and a collection of unstructured documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of unstructured documents each containing a keyword of the search query; collecting a set of structured documents each containing an attribute/value pair of the search query; analyzing each document in the set of unstructured documents to determine a first content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said keywords from the search query; analyzing each document in the set of structured documents to determine a second content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said attribute/value pairs from the search query; comparing the first content characteristics of each document in the set of unstructured documents to the second content characteristic of every document in the set of structured documents; and based on the results of the comparing step, joining an unstructured document and a structured document as a response pair when that document pair contains a common keyword.

Claim 27

A method for finding responses to a search query directed to a universe of documents including a collection of structured documents and a collection of unstructured documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of unstructured documents each containing a keyword of the search query; collecting a set of structured documents each containing an attribute/value pair of the search query; analyzing each document in the set of unstructured documents to determine a first content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said keywords from the search query; analyzing each document in the set of structured documents to determine a second content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said attribute/value pairs from the search query; comparing the first content characteristics of each document in the set of unstructured documents to the second content characteristic of every document in the set of structured documents; and based on the results of the comparing step, joining an unstructured document and a structured document as a response pair when that document pair contains a common keyword.

Claim 28

A method for finding responses to a search query directed to a universe of documents including a collection of structured documents and a collection of unstructured documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of unstructured documents each containing a keyword of the search query; collecting a set of structured documents each containing an attribute/value pair of the search query; analyzing each document in the set of unstructured documents to determine a first content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said keywords from the search query; analyzing each document in the set of structured documents to determine a second content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said attribute/value pairs from the search query; comparing the first content characteristics of each document in the set of unstructured documents to the second content characteristic of every document in the set of structured documents; and based on the results of the comparing step, joining an unstructured document and a structured document as a response pair when the documents in that pair contain terms common to both documents in the pair which terms each have a ratio of number of appearances in the document to the number of appearances in the collection which satisfies a predetermined range.

Claim 29

A method for finding responses to a search query directed to a universe of documents including a collection of structured documents and a collection of unstructured documents, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a set of unstructured documents each containing a keyword of the search query; collecting a set of structured documents each containing an attribute/value pair of the search query; analyzing each document in the set of unstructured documents to determine a first content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said keywords from the search query; analyzing each document in the set of structured documents to determine a second content characteristic in a predefined neighborhood adjacent to at least one of said attribute/value pairs from the search query; comparing the first content characteristics of each document in the set of unstructured documents to the second content characteristic of every document in the set of structured documents; and based on the results of the comparing step, joining an unstructured document and a structured document as a response pair when the documents in that pair contain terms common to both documents in the pair which terms each have a ratio of number of appearances in the document to the number of appearances in the collection which satisfies a predetermined range.