Hierarchical Contextual Search Suggestions for Content Platforms
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Solution Overview
Problem
Content management platforms face challenges in generating relevant search suggestions while balancing performance, especially when managing large amounts of hierarchical content, as they struggle to determine an appropriate scope that balances relevance and efficiency.
Innovation Solution
The system generates hierarchical contextual search suggestions by evaluating context information related to the user, associated users, and device information, and dynamically or pre-generates suggestions based on multiple levels of the content hierarchy, including parent levels when necessary, to provide relevant suggestions efficiently.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If search suggestions are generated based on a broad scope of hierarchical content, then the relevance and usefulness of suggestions is improved, but the computing resources and processing time required increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the hierarchical content into multiple levels (e.g., parent level and child level). The system first generates search suggestions from the current level, and only if insufficient suggestions are obtained, it expands to adjacent levels. This segmentation allows the system to balance relevance and computing resources by processing content level-by-level rather than all-at-once.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements pre-generation and caching of search suggestions for hierarchical content. By pre-computing and storing suggestions in a data structure organized by hierarchy levels, the system reduces real-time computing requirements while maintaining suggestion quality. This preliminary action is particularly evident in the cached implementation where suggestions are prepared in advance.
2Measurement precision
If search suggestions are generated in real-time for large hierarchical content, then the freshness and accuracy of suggestions is improved, but the latency increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent pre-generates search suggestions and caches them in a data structure organized by hierarchy levels before user queries arrive. This preliminary computation stores results that can be quickly retrieved during actual search operations, significantly reducing latency while maintaining accuracy. The cached suggestions are organized to enable efficient lookup by content level.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent optimizes suggestion generation by focusing computational effort locally on the current hierarchy level and only expanding to adjacent levels when necessary. Rather than processing the entire hierarchical content uniformly, the system applies quality computation locally where needed, reducing overall processing time while maintaining suggestion accuracy for the user's current context.
3Productivity
If the scope of search suggestion generation is limited to the current hierarchy level, then the computing efficiency is improved, but the relevance and usefulness of suggestions deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic scope expansion mechanism where the search suggestion generation scope adjusts based on the quantity of suggestions obtained. The system starts with the current hierarchy level (narrow scope for efficiency), and dynamically expands to parent or child levels (broader scope for relevance) only when the initial generation yields insufficient suggestions. This dynamic adaptation balances computing efficiency with suggestion relevance.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent structures the search suggestion data in a nested hierarchical format where parent level suggestions contain references to child level content and vice versa. This nested organization allows the system to efficiently navigate between hierarchy levels, expanding scope only when necessary while maintaining a structured approach that preserves computing efficiency.
4Loss of time
If search suggestions are pre-generated and cached, then the latency is reduced, but the storage requirements and data management complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the cached search suggestions by hierarchy levels, organizing pre-generated suggestions into a structured data format that separates content by level (parent level, child level, etc.). This segmentation allows the system to store only necessary suggestion data for each level rather than duplicating all suggestions across all levels, reducing storage requirements while maintaining fast retrieval capability.
Data Source
AI summary
Examples of the present disclosure describe systems and methods relating to hierarchical contextual search suggestions. In an example, search suggestions may be provided to a user searching for content of a content management platform. In some examples, the content management platform may manage hierarchical content, such that search suggestions provided to the user for a search query may be associated with content at a level of the hierarchical content accessed by the user. If there is not a sufficient number of search suggestions to provide to the user at the current level of the hierarchy, additional and/or alternative search suggestions may be generated for the user based on content from a different level of the hierarchy. As a result, the user may continue to receive relevant search suggestions, while reducing the amount of computing overhead and analysis used to generate such search suggestions.