Patent ID: 8280720

Claim:
An association dictionary creation apparatus that creates an association dictionary storing a relationship between a plurality of words, the association dictionary creation apparatus comprising: a word selection unit configured to select an arbitrary word from information representative of a user's taste as an associated word search word, and to select words, other than the associated word search word, included in the information representative of the user's taste, as associated word candidates; a non-transitory database configured to store content; an associated word storage unit configured to select an associated word associated with the associated word search word from among the associated word candidates, based on the content stored in the database, and to store the associated word search word and the associated word into the association dictionary in association with each other; an input unit configured to obtain a search criterion including a search keyword; a search criterion generation unit configured to obtain, from the association dictionary, the associated word associated with the search keyword included in the search criterion obtained by said input unit, and to generate, from the obtained associated word and the search key word, an extended search criterion indicating that one of the associated word and the search keyword is included; and a search unit configured to search the content stored in the database for information matching the extended search criterion generated by said search criterion generation unit, wherein said word selection unit is configured to obtain the information representative of the user's tastes from a profile in which information representative of the user's taste is stored, and to select the associated word search word and the associated word candidates when the profile is updated.