Patent ID: 8326861
Filing Date: 2012-12-04
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving a search query, the search query comprising a sequence of search terms and associated with a user identifier; accessing a profile tree associated with the user identifier and including a hierarchy of nodes, the hierarchy of nodes including a root node and a plurality of child nodes, each child node descending from the root node or another child node, the profile tree defining a plurality of levels, each level including child nodes that descend from the root node at a same depth, and each node of the profile tree representing a respective topic that is derived from search history data associated with the user identifier, and each node of the profile tree corresponding to at least one of a term or a phrase, and wherein the terms and phrases of the profile tree correspond to the nodes of the profile tree according to the respective topics to which the terms and phrases belong; for each of the search terms: identifying search terms in the search query that have respective importance scores exceeding a threshold; and generating an alternative query from the identified search terms that have respective importance scores that exceed the threshold.