Patent ID: 7991769

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a query identifying auxiliary information comprising independent taxonomies arranged as trees; generating a plurality of queries from the received query; retrieving a plurality of documents having both textual content and located within hierarchies of the auxiliary information to retrieve response objects matching at least one keyword of the query and matching at least one location in first and second trees, wherein the at least one location is associated with at least one response object; annotating each of the plurality of the documents with a generalization cost of performing the query; and performing a budgeted generalization search by: executing the plurality of queries on the plurality of documents to locate response objects by directing a search through levels of hierarchies of the taxonomies to find the response objects matching keywords of the query and also matching the taxonomies of the first and the second trees; listing the response objects having the generalization cost falling within a budgeted cost; and ranking the response objects by the generalization cost; wherein the method is performed by one or more processors.