Patent ID: 8156111

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for responding to a first search query that does not include an explicit temporal qualification, comprising: receiving the first search query from a user device; determining that the first search query is implicitly temporally qualified with reference to a first query term included in the first search query and query log data that relate a plurality of previous query terms included in previous search queries by a plurality of users to explicit temporal references included in the previous search queries, wherein the query log data represent frequencies with which the previous query terms were associated with particular ones of the explicit temporal references in the previous search queries, and wherein the previous query terms are included in the query log data only where the frequency with which each of the previous query terms was associated with at least one of the explicit temporal references in the previous search queries exceeds a programmable threshold, and wherein the first query term is associated with a first plurality of the explicit temporal references in the query log data; expanding the first search query to include one or more of the explicit temporal references; generating first search results using the expanded first search query, wherein the first search results are biased in accordance with the frequency with which each of the first plurality of explicit temporal references is associated with the first query term in the query log data; and transmitting the first search results to the user device.