Patent ID: 8825641

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of measuring duplication between a pair of results provided by an information retrieval system in response to a query, the method comprising: accessing history data for the information retrieval system stored on a memory and retrieving query data describing the number of times that users of the information retrieval system have previously selected either or both of the pair of results, and a relative presentation sequence of the pair of results when displayed by the information retrieval system at each selection; determining from the query data, at a processor, a fraction of user selections in which a predefined combination of one or both of the pair of results were selected for a predefined presentation sequence; determining from the fraction, at the processor, a measure of the duplication between the pair of results; and causing a display of results for the query to indicate the pair of results are duplicates when the measure of the duplication meets a condition, wherein the query data comprises: a count of the number of times that both of the pair of results were selected when the first one of the pair of results was presented ahead of a second one of the pair of results; and a count of the number of times that both of the pair of results were selected when the second one of the pair of results was presented ahead of the first one of the pair of results.