Patent ID: 7092936

Claim:
A computer implemented method of searching comprising the steps of: receiving from a user a search query requesting information, wherein the query is provided to retrieve at least one recommendation and generate an expanded query; retrieving the at least one recommendation for alterative search results using the received query, the recommendation based on users search query logs and user search patterns, and user profile information, wherein the at least one recommendation relating to the query is retrieved from a recommendation database, and wherein the recommendation database is generated by performing the steps of: performing data mining using the users search query logs, the user search patterns, and the user profile information to generate a plurality of recommendations relating to search query strings based on the users search query logs, user search patterns, received query and user profile information, generating a data structure including the plurality of recommendations relating to search query strings, and determining that the at least one recommendation is a valid recommendation in the plurality of recommendations relating to the search query strings; generating a text index including the at least one valid recommendation; generating an expanded query using the received query; performing a search using the expanded query to retrieve documents; generating thematic clusters relating to the retrieved documents, the thematic clusters generated by performing linguistic analysis of the retrieved documents using linguistic extraction features to generate themes that describe the retrieved documents; and presenting the recommendation for alterative search results, the thematic clusters relating to the retrieved documents, and the retrieved documents.