Visual method and apparatus for enhancing search result navigation

a visual method and search result technology, applied in the field of computer information processing technology, can solve the problems of increasing the difficulty of web users to quickly and accurately find required information, the inability to display all search results simultaneously to the web user, and the search engine always returning too many search results, so as to enhance the search result navigation and get required information quickly and accurately.

US20080222145A1Inactive Publication Date: 2008-09-11IBM CORP
10 Cites 18 Cited by

Patent Information

Authority / Receiving Office
US · United States
Patent Type
Applications(United States)
Current Assignee / Owner
Publication Date
2008-09-11
Estimated Expiration
Not applicable · inactive patent

Smart Images

  • Figure 1
    Figure 1
  • Figure 2
    Figure 2
  • Figure 3
    Figure 3
Patent Text Reader

Abstract

A visual method for enhancing search result navigation, comprising: obtaining a first search result from a search engine; clustering the first search result to get clustering information; calculating the correlations between the clustering information and the ranked list of the first search result, and performing visualization processing on the clustering information; and displaying the visual cluster hierarchy and the ranked list of the first search result in a joint manner based on the correlations. When a cluster is selected, further searching is performed and the search result is clustered again. Using the present invention, through combining a traditional ranked list of search results and the visual cluster hierarchy of these search results to display them in a joint manner, a convenient way is provided for the web user to find the potential correlations between the visual cluster hierarchy and the ranked list of the search results. Besides, through dynamically searching and clustering more search results again, the web user may get more detailed and more accurate search results easily.
Need to check novelty before this filing date? Find Prior Art

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11 / 619,665 filed Jan. 4, 2007, the complete disclosure of which, in its entirety, is herein incorporated by reference.TECHNICAL FIELD

[0002] The present invention relates to computer information processing technology, specifically, to a visual method and apparatus for enhancing the navigation of search results returned by a search engine.TECHNICAL BACKGROUND

[0003] With the wide application of the Internet, people can get lots of information from the web. However, due to the rapid growth of the web contents, it becomes more and more difficult for web users to find required information rapidly and accurately. Currently, web users mainly rely on search engines to find required information. Generally, the process in which a web user uses a search engine to find required information is as follows: the web user submits a query, which may be, for instance, a single keyword or a combina...

Examples

Embodiment Construction

[0059]It is believed that the above and other objectives, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent through the following detailed description of particular embodiments of the present invention taken in conjunction with the drawings.

[0060]FIG. 1 is a flowchart of a visual method for enhancing search result navigation according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[0061]As shown in FIG. 1, first in Step 101, a first search result is obtained from a search engine. When the search engine receives a query submitted by a web user, a search result may be generated based on the query. The search result includes a plurality of documents, each of which constitutes a search result entry. Usually, a web user submits a query through a browser, which may be, for instance, an IE browser from Microsoft Company, a Netscape browser from Netscape Company or the like, and the search engine may be a known search engine such as Google or Yahoo!. As known by those sk...