Patent ID: 8041718

Claim:
An information processing apparatus comprising: a keyword extraction unit configured to extract keywords from text data representing a first content to be a base of a search, to set scores of the respective keywords extracted from the text data representing the first content, to extract keywords from text data representing a second content for calculating a degree of matching with the first content, and to set scores of the respective keywords extracted from the text data representing the second content, the scores of the respective keywords extracted from the text data representing the first and second content set in accordance with occurrence positions of the keywords within the first and second content; a keyword expansion unit configured to expand the keywords extracted from the text data representing the first content data and to set scores of the expanded keywords based upon respective user-defined scoring coefficients of the expanded keywords; a matching-degree calculation unit configured to calculate a degree of matching between the first content and the second content based on scores of keywords included in both the keywords extracted from the text data representing the first content and the keywords extracted from the text data representing the second content; and an output unit configure to output, as a search result, information on a predetermined number of the second content which has a high degree of matching with the first content, based on a result of calculation performed by the matching-degree calculation unit, wherein the matching-degree calculation unit is further configured to multiply the scores of the keywords included in both the keywords extracted from the text data representing the first content and the keywords extracted from the text data representing the second content, and to calculate, as the degree of matching between the first content and the second content, a value obtained by adding results of multiplications of the scores of the keywords included in both the keywords extracted from the text data representing the first content and the keywords extracted from the text data representing the second content.