Patent ID: 7349895

Claim:
A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing steps comprising: identifying, in response to a search query, first multimedia objects having an associated keyword that matches a keyword in the search query, and identifying second multimedia objects that have content features similar to those of the first multimedia objects, wherein the content features do not match the keyword in the search query; presenting the first and second multimedia objects to a user; monitoring feedback from the user as to which of the first and second multimedia objects are relevant to the search query; maintaining associations between the associated and search query keywords and the first and second multimedia objects, the associations being weighted to indicate how relevant the keywords are to the multimedia objects; adjusting the weights of the associations based on the users feedback, wherein the adjusting comprises increasing an initial weight of an association between the keyword and a particular multimedia object that is deemed relevant by the user or/and decreasing the initial weight of an association between the keyword and a particular multimedia object that is deemed irrelevant by the user; and annotating one or more of the second multimedia objects, which are deemed relevant by the user, with the keyword, wherein results are made available for image retrieval.