System and method implementing a search and discovery loop to help users quickly navigate through structured and unstructured information

A system for searching and discovering information comprising:

• a first server comprising an e-commerce digital catalogue of items and connected to a communication network;
• a front-end client associated with a user and connected to said communication network;
• and
• a back-end server connected to said communication network, said back-end server comprising in turn:
• an indexing section adapted to process data of said digital catalogue by:
• cleaning and normalizing the data of said digital catalogue;
• detecting one or more data types from one or more data fields of said data;
• assessing relevant data fields of said data based on a confidence score for the detected one or more data types;
• extracting entities and properties from data of the relevant data fields using at least one method selected from a group consisting of rule-based tagging, regular expression assessment, statistical procedures, neural networks, Bayesian inference, and automated reasoning from formal ontologies;
• storing said extracted entities and properties in a database according to an ontology;
• and
• building an index with the extracted entities and properties and associated data types of the data of said digital catalogue according to the ontology;
• and
• a runtime section adapted to interpret a user query received from said front-end client, compare the user query and/or user behavior with said ontology and said index, and send to said front-end client suggestions to the user on how to refine said query, thereby providing an interactive search loop.