Content propagation for enhanced document retrieval

Claim 3

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the reference information comprises at least one of a link or substantially unique document ID associated with a document of the one or more documents.

Claim 4

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the one or more documents comprise at least one of knowledge base article(s), product help, task, or developer data.

Claim 5

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the one or more sources of data comprise at least one of service request(s), newsgroup posting(s), or search query log(s).

Claim 6

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of semantically or contextually related to associated ones of the one or more documents.

Claim 7

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of a title of a document, product problem context, or product problem resolution information.

Claim 8

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein for each enhanced document of the one or more enhanced documents, there is a corresponding original document from which the enhanced document was generated.

Claim 9

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein calculating the relevance is based on how many times a particular document of the one or more documents is identified within its context in the metadata.

Claim 10

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of article title(s), product problem context, or product problem resolution information, and wherein calculating relevance further comprises weighting the article title(s) or product problem context to indicate a greater relevance than any product problem resolution information.

Claim 11

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein calculating relevance further comprises assigning greater relevance to feature(s) of the metadata that occur in content of the data source with greater frequency as compared to the frequency of occurrence of other metadata features in the content.

Claim 12

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein calculating relevance further comprises assigning greater weight to feature(s) of the metadata found in a document of the one or more documents as a function of an age of the document.

Claim 13

A method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the features are represented with respective nodes in the first and second clusters, and wherein the importance measurement(s) for each of the nodes is based on a similarity function that measures a distance between objects in the first and second clusters.

Claim 14

A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions providing content propagation for enhanced document retrieval, the computer-executable instructions comprising instructions for: identifying reference information directed to one or more documents, wherein the reference information identified from one or more sources of data, is independent from a data source comprising the one or more documents; extracting metadata that is proximally located to the reference information, which is surrounding the reference information and is semantically or contextually related to the reference information; calculating relevance between respective features of the metadata to content of associated ones of the one or more documents; indexing associated portions of the metadata with the relevance of features from the respective portions along with relevance scores, into original content of the document, for each document of the one or more documents, wherein the indexing generates one or more enhanced documents; analyzing one or more enhanced documents to locate relevance information based on a search query; ranking one or more enhanced document retrieval based on relevance scores; communicating ranked results and snippet descriptions for enhanced document, retrieval, based on the search query; wherein the one or more sources of data comprise a search query log, and wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for: identifying search queries from the search query log, wherein the search queries have a relatively high frequency of occurrence (FOO) to search the data source; determining article(s) selected by an end-user from search query results, the article(s) being from the data source; and determining missing end-user selection(s), where a missing end-user selection is an article in the search query results that was not selected; wherein the instructions for determining missing end-user selection(s) further comprise instructions for clustering heterogeneous objects using inter-layer links to determine importance measurements for features of the heterogeneous objects, the heterogeneous object comprising a first cluster of similar queries and a second cluster of related documents, the similar queries having been identified in the search query log, the similar queries being associated search result(s) comprising the one or more documents, the related documents being identified in the search result(s) independent of whether individual ones of the related documents were selected by an end-user from the search results.

Claim 15

A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions providing content propagation for enhanced document retrieval, the computer-executable instructions comprising instructions for: identifying reference information directed to one or more documents, wherein the reference information identified from one or more sources of data, is independent from a data source comprising the one or more documents; extracting metadata that is proximally located to the reference information, which is surrounding the reference information and is semantically or contextually related to the reference information; calculating relevance between respective features of the metadata to content of associated ones of the one or more documents; indexing associated portions of the metadata with the relevance of features from the respective portions along with relevance scores, into original content of the document, for each document of the one or more documents, wherein the indexing generates one or more enhanced documents; analyzing one or more enhanced documents to locate relevance information based on a search query; ranking one or more enhanced document retrieval based on relevance scores; communicating ranked results and snippet descriptions for enhanced document, retrieval, based on the search query; wherein the one or more sources of data comprise a search query log, and wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for: identifying search queries from the search query log, wherein the search queries have a relatively high frequency of occurrence (FOO) to search the data source; determining article(s) selected by an end-user from search query results, the article(s) being from the data source; and determining missing end-user selection(s), where a missing end-user selection is an article in the search query results that was not selected; wherein the instructions for determining missing end-user selection(s) further comprise instructions for clustering heterogeneous objects using inter-layer links to determine importance measurements for features of the heterogeneous objects, the heterogeneous object comprising a first cluster of similar queries and a second cluster of related documents, the similar queries having been identified in the search query log, the similar queries being associated search result(s) comprising the one or more documents, the related documents being identified in the search result(s) independent of whether individual ones of the related documents were selected by an end-user from the search results.

Claim 16

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the reference information comprises at least one of a link or substantially unique document ID associated with a document of the one or more documents.

Claim 17

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the one or more documents comprises at least one of knowledge base article(s), product help, task, or developer data.

Claim 18

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the one or more sources of data comprise at least one of service request(s), newsgroup posting(s), or search query log(s).

Claim 19

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the metadata is semantically or contextually related to associated ones of the one or more documents.

Claim 20

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of a title of a document, product problem context, or product problem resolution information.

Claim 21

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein for each enhanced document of the one or more enhanced documents, there is a corresponding original document from which the enhanced document was generated.

Claim 22

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein calculating the relevance is based on how many times a particular document of the one or more documents is identified within its context in the metadata.

Claim 23

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of article title(s), product problem context, or product problem resolution information, and wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for weighting the article title(s) or product problem context to indicate a greater relevance than any product problem resolution information.

Claim 24

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for assigning greater relevance to feature(s) of the metadata that occur in content of the data source with greater frequency as compared to the frequency of occurrence of other metadata features in the content.

Claim 25

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for assigning greater weight to feature(s) of the metadata found in a document of the one or more documents as a function of an age of the document.

Claim 26

The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 , wherein the features are represented with respective nodes in the first and second clusters, and wherein the importance measurement(s) for each of the nodes is based on a similarity function that measures a distance between objects in the first and second clusters.

Claim 27

A computing device providing content propagation for enhanced document retrieval, the computing device comprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising computer-program instructions executable by the processor for: identifying reference information directed to one or more documents, wherein the reference information identified from one or more sources of data, is independent from a data source comprising the one or more documents; extracting metadata that is proximally located to the reference information, which is surrounding the reference information and is semantically or contextually related to the reference information; calculating relevance between respective features of the metadata to content of associated ones of the one or more documents; indexing associated portions of the metadata with the relevance of features from the respective portions along with relevance scores, into original content of the document, for each document of the one or more documents, wherein the indexing generates one or more enhanced documents; analyzing one or more enhanced documents to locate relevance information based on a search query; ranking one or more enhanced document retrieval based on relevance scores; communicating ranked results and snippet descriptions for enhanced document, retrieval, based on the search query; wherein the one or more sources of data comprise a search query log, and wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for: identifying search queries from the search query log, wherein the search queries have a relatively high frequency of occurrence (FOO) to search the data source; determining article(s) selected by an end-user from search query results, the article(s) being from the data source; and determining missing end-user selection(s), where a missing end-user selection is an article in the search query results that was not selected; wherein the instructions for determining missing end-user selection(s) further comprise instructions for clustering heterogeneous objects using inter-layer links to determine importance measurements for features of the heterogeneous objects, the heterogeneous object comprising a first cluster of similar queries and a second cluster of related documents, thc similar queries having been identified in the search query log, the similar queries being associated search result(s) comprising the one or more documents, the related documents being identified in the search result(s) independent of whether individual ones of the related documents were selected by an end-user from the search results.

Claim 28

A computing device providing content propagation for enhanced document retrieval, the computing device comprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising computer-program instructions executable by the processor for: identifying reference information directed to one or more documents, wherein the reference information identified from one or more sources of data, is independent from a data source comprising the one or more documents; extracting metadata that is proximally located to the reference information, which is surrounding the reference information and is semantically or contextually related to the reference information; calculating relevance between respective features of the metadata to content of associated ones of the one or more documents; indexing associated portions of the metadata with the relevance of features from the respective portions along with relevance scores, into original content of the document, for each document of the one or more documents, wherein the indexing generates one or more enhanced documents; analyzing one or more enhanced documents to locate relevance information based on a search query; ranking one or more enhanced document retrieval based on relevance scores; communicating ranked results and snippet descriptions for enhanced document, retrieval, based on the search query; wherein the one or more sources of data comprise a search query log, and wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for: identifying search queries from the search query log, wherein the search queries have a relatively high frequency of occurrence (FOO) to search the data source; determining article(s) selected by an end-user from search query results, the article(s) being from the data source; and determining missing end-user selection(s), where a missing end-user selection is an article in the search query results that was not selected; wherein the instructions for determining missing end-user selection(s) further comprise instructions for clustering heterogeneous objects using inter-layer links to determine importance measurements for features of the heterogeneous objects, the heterogeneous object comprising a first cluster of similar queries and a second cluster of related documents, thc similar queries having been identified in the search query log, the similar queries being associated search result(s) comprising the one or more documents, the related documents being identified in the search result(s) independent of whether individual ones of the related documents were selected by an end-user from the search results.

Claim 29

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the reference information comprises at least one of a link or substantially unique document ID associated with a document of the one or more documents.

Claim 30

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the one or more documents comprise at least one of knowledge base article(s), product help, task, or developer data.

Claim 31

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the one or more sources of data comprise at least one of service request(s), newsgroup posting(s), or search query log(s).

Claim 32

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the metadata is at least one of semantically or contextually related to associated ones of the one or more documents.

Claim 33

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of a title of a document, product problem context, or product problem resolution information.

Claim 34

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein for each enhanced document of the one or more enhanced documents, there is a corresponding original document from which the enhanced document was generated.

Claim 35

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein calculating the relevance is based on how many times a particular document of the one or more documents is identified within its context in the metadata.

Claim 36

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of article title(s), product problem context, or product problem resolution information, and wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for weighting the article title(s) or product problem context to indicate a greater relevance than any product problem resolution information.

Claim 37

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for assigning greater relevance to feature(s) of the metadata that occur in content of the data source with greater frequency as compared to the frequency of occurrence of other metadata features in the content.

Claim 38

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the instructions for calculating relevance further comprise instructions for assigning greater weight to feature(s) of the metadata found in a document of the one or more documents as a function of an age of the document.

Claim 39

The computing device of claim 25 , wherein the features are represented with respective nodes in the first and second clusters, and wherein the importance measurement(s) for each of the nodes is based on a similarity function that measures a distance between objects in the first and second clusters.

Claim 40

A computing device providing content propagation for enhanced document retrieval, the computing device comprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising computer-program instructions executable by the processor for: identifying means to identify reference information directed to one or more documents, wherein the reference information identified from one or more sources of data, is independent from a data source comprising the one or more documents; extracting metadata that is proximally located to the reference information, which is surrounding the reference information and is semantically or contextually related to the reference information; calculating relevance between respective features of the metadata to content of associated ones of the one or more documents; indexing associated portions of the metadata with the relevance of features from the respective portions along with relevance scores, into original content of the document, for each document of the one or more documents; wherein the indexing generates one or more enhanced documents; analyzing means to analyze one or more enhanced documents to locate relevance information based on a search query; ranking means to rank one or more enhanced document retrieval based on relevance scores; and communicating means to communicate ranked results and snippet descriptions for enhanced document, retrieval, based on the search query; wherein the calculating means further comprise clustering means to cluster heterogeneous objects using inter-layer links to determine importance measurements for features of the heterogeneous objects, the heterogeneous object comprising a first cluster of similar queries and a second cluster of related documents, the similar queries having been identified in the search query log, the similar queries being associated search result(s) comprising the one or more documents, the related documents being identified in the search result(s) independent of whether individual ones of the related documents were selected by an end-user from the search results.

Claim 41

A computing device providing content propagation for enhanced document retrieval, the computing device comprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising computer-program instructions executable by the processor for: identifying means to identify reference information directed to one or more documents, wherein the reference information identified from one or more sources of data, is independent from a data source comprising the one or more documents; extracting metadata that is proximally located to the reference information, which is surrounding the reference information and is semantically or contextually related to the reference information; calculating relevance between respective features of the metadata to content of associated ones of the one or more documents; indexing associated portions of the metadata with the relevance of features from the respective portions along with relevance scores, into original content of the document, for each document of the one or more documents; wherein the indexing generates one or more enhanced documents; analyzing means to analyze one or more enhanced documents to locate relevance information based on a search query; ranking means to rank one or more enhanced document retrieval based on relevance scores; and communicating means to communicate ranked results and snippet descriptions for enhanced document, retrieval, based on the search query; wherein the calculating means further comprise clustering means to cluster heterogeneous objects using inter-layer links to determine importance measurements for features of the heterogeneous objects, the heterogeneous object comprising a first cluster of similar queries and a second cluster of related documents, the similar queries having been identified in the search query log, the similar queries being associated search result(s) comprising the one or more documents, the related documents being identified in the search result(s) independent of whether individual ones of the related documents were selected by an end-user from the search results.

Claim 42

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the reference information comprises at least one of a link or substantially unique document ID associated with a document of the one or more documents.

Claim 43

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the one or more documents comprise at least one of knowledge base article(s), product help, task, or developer data.

Claim 44

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the one or more sources of data comprise at least one of service request(s), newsgroup posting(s), or search query log(s).

Claim 45

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the metadata is semantically or contextually related to associated ones of the one or more documents.

Claim 46

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the metadata comprises at least one of article title(s), product problem context, or product problem resolution information, and wherein the calculating means to calculate relevance further comprise weighting means to weight the article title(s) or product problem context to indicate a greater relevance than any product problem resolution information.

Claim 47

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the calculating means to calculate relevance further comprise assigning means to assign greater relevance to feature(s) of the metadata that occur in content of the data source with greater frequency as compared to the frequency of occurrence of other metadata features in the content.

Claim 48

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the calculating means to calculate relevance further comprise assigning means to assign greater weight to feature(s) of the metadata found in a document of the one or more documents as a function of an age of the document.

Claim 49

The computing device of claim 37 , wherein the one or more sources of data comprise a search query log, and wherein the calculating means to calculate relevance further comprise: identifying means to identify search queries from the search query log, wherein the search queries have a relatively high frequency of occurrence (FOO) to search the data source; determining means to determine article(s) selected by an end-user from search query results, the article(s) being from the data source; and calculating means to calculate missing end-user selection(s), where a missing end-user selection is an article in the search query results that was not selected.