Search Result Conditioning Component Duplicate Removal
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Solution Overview
Problem
Electronic marketplaces face challenges in providing diverse search results due to duplicate or near-duplicate listings for the same items, caused by incomplete or unstructured product information from various merchants, leading to repetitive search results for consumers.
Innovation Solution
A search result conditioning component is implemented to remove duplicates and increase diversity by generating similarity scores between search results, applying thresholds to identify and remove highly similar items, and presenting a conditioned search result group that includes a representative member from each identified class.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If product search engines provide comprehensive search results from multiple merchants, then the quantity of search results increases, but the diversity of search results decreases due to duplicate or near-duplicate listings
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameter of similarity threshold to dynamically adjust which search results are considered duplicates. By modifying this threshold parameter, the system can adapt between providing more results (lower threshold) or more diverse results (higher threshold), resolving the contradiction between quantity and diversity of search results
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary component (duplicate detection system) that processes search results between the search engine and the user. This intermediary analyzes similarity metrics and filters duplicates while preserving diverse results, allowing the system to maintain both high quantity and high diversity of search results
2Loss of information
If search results include all listings from various merchants, then the completeness of product information increases, but the repetitiveness of search results increases due to incomplete or unstructured product information
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and removes duplicate search results from the complete set of merchant listings. By taking out repetitive entries while retaining the complete set of unique products, the system maintains information completeness while eliminating harmful repetitiveness
Solution Approach 2:
The patent converts the harmful effect of repetitiveness into a benefit by using the presence of multiple similar listings as data to train and improve the duplicate detection algorithm. The repetitious data becomes useful for enhancing the system's ability to identify and remove future duplicates
Data Source
AI summary
Various embodiments of a system and method for conditioning search results are described. The system and method for conditioning search results may include a search result conditioning component. The search result conditioning component may be configured to determine a search result group including multiple search results each corresponding to an item offered for sale; such search results may be results of a search query. The search result conditioning component may be configure to modify the search result group by removing one or more search results from the search result group in response to determining that a measure of similarity between the one or more search results and other search results of the search result group is greater than a requisite measure of similarity (e.g., a threshold). The search result conditioning component may be configured to output the modified search result group.