Attribute Combination Tagging for E-commerce Search Precision
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
In e-commerce systems, users often encounter web pages displaying items with desired attribute combinations, but the desired items may be unavailable for order, while items with undesired attributes are available, due to the lack of efficient filtering and retrieval of available attribute combinations.
Innovation Solution
An information processing apparatus that extracts attribute combinations from web pages, associates them with availability information, and generates tags for search criteria, allowing only available attribute combinations to be stored and searched, ensuring that only items with desired and available attributes are retrieved.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If web pages display all attribute combinations of items (including unavailable ones), then completeness of information is improved, but search accuracy deteriorates because users cannot easily find only available items
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the attribute combinations into two distinct groups: available combinations and unavailable combinations. By creating separate data structures and search paths for each group, the system maintains complete information while enabling precise filtering. The segmentation allows users to access all attribute variations through detailed views while ensuring search results only return available items.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary component (search control unit) that mediates between the complete attribute combination data and user search requests. This intermediary filters and processes the raw attribute data, applying availability criteria to generate search results that balance information completeness with search accuracy.
2Loss of information
If the system stores and processes all attribute combinations, then data completeness is improved, but processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-processing attribute combinations and marking their availability status before search operations. The system预先 (in advance) organizes attribute combinations into available and unavailable categories, creating indexed data structures that simplify subsequent search operations and reduce real-time processing complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by treating available and unavailable attribute combinations differently in the data structure and processing logic. Each attribute combination carries a local quality attribute (availability status) that determines how it is handled during search operations, allowing the system to maintain complete data while applying different processing rules to different subsets.
3Productivity
If the system retrieves all items matching search criteria, then recall is improved, but precision deteriorates because unavailable items are included
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies dynamics by making the search retrieval process adaptive based on the availability status of attribute combinations. The search control unit dynamically adjusts the retrieval criteria during query processing, switching between broad retrieval (for recall) and filtered retrieval (for precision) based on real-time availability information.
Data Source
AI summary
An information processing apparatus extracts a plurality of combinations among combinations of attributes, in different attribute categories, of an item from display information indicating display details of a web page for the item. Each of the extracted combinations is associated with available/unavailable information indicating whether the item having the attribute combination is available for order. The information processing apparatus stores, for each combination available for order among the extracted combinations, a tag indicating the combination and corresponding to search criteria of the logical AND of a plurality of attributes constituting the combination, in association with item identification information identifying the item in a tag storage unit. The information processing apparatus deletes, when a tag indicating an attribute combination unavailable for order is stored in association with the item identification information in the tag storage unit, the tag.