US 2011/0258034 A1 · HIERARCHICALLY-STRUCTURED INDEXING AND RETRIEVAL

Abstract

Novel and efficient methods are described for indexing advertisements (“ads”) and other resources that are defined and organized in accordance with a hierarchical schema. In accordance with at least one embodiment, an ad corpus is transformed into a collection of hierarchically structured textual documents. An indexing technique that exploits the hierarchical structure is then applied to construct a compact yet effective ad index that can be used for performing advanced match or other ad retrieval functions. Various retrieval methods are also described herein that are capable of exploiting the hierarchical structure of the ad corpus to retrieve more relevant ads than those yielded by conventional methods.

Claims22

Dependent claims

A computer-implemented method for generating an index useable by an information retrieval system to identify resources stored in a hierarchical database in response to receiving a query, the method comprising:

generating fields of text representative of entities in the hierarchical database;
generating indexing units by combining fields of text representative of hierarchically-related entities in the hierarchical database, wherein the combining includes combining fields of text representative of entities having a same type and a same parent entity and wherein each resource is obtainable from one or more entities represented by the fields of text included in a single indexing unit;
and
storing the indexing units in a database accessible to the information retrieval system.

1 more element

A system, comprising:

a hierarchical database that stores resources;
and
a resource indexer that generates fields of text representative of entities in the hierarchical database, generates indexing units by combining fields of text representative of hierarchically-related entities in the hierarchical database, and stores the indexing units in a database accessible to the information retrieval system, the database accessible to the information retrieval system being useable by the information retrieval system to identify resources stored in the hierarchical database in response to receiving a query;
wherein the resource indexer combines fields of text representative of hierarchically-related entities to generate indexing units by combining fields of text representative of entities having a same type and a same parent entity;
and
wherein each resource is obtainable from one or more entities represented by the fields of text included in a single indexing unit.

3 more elements

A computer-implemented method for identifying one or more resources from among a plurality of resources stored in a hierarchical database in response to receiving a query, comprising:

calculating a relevancy score for each of a plurality of indexing units with respect to the query, wherein each indexing unit comprises a combination of two or more fields of text representative of two or more hierarchically-related entities in the hierarchical database, the hierarchically-related entities including entities having a same type and a same parent entity;
selecting one or more of the indexing units based at least on the relevancy scores;
and
identifying the one or more resources based on the selected indexing unit(s), each identified resource being obtainable from one or more entities represented by the fields of text included in a selected indexing unit.

1 more element

A system for identifying one or more resources from among a plurality of resources stored in a hierarchical database, comprising:

a resource index that stores a plurality of indexing units, wherein each indexing unit comprises a combination of two or more fields of text representative of two or more hierarchically-related entities in hierarchical database, the hierarchically-related entities including entities having a same type and a same parent entity;
a resource retriever that receives a query and, responsive to receiving the query, calculates a relevancy score for each of the indexing units with respect to the query, selects one or more of the indexing units based at least on the relevancy scores, and identifies the one or more resources based on the selected indexing unit(s), each identified resource being obtainable from one or more entities represented by the fields of text included in a selected indexing unit.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Hierarchically-structured indexing and retrieval

Life of this patent

Hierarchically-structured indexing and retrieval

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims22