Patent ID: 7774360

Claim:
In a computing environment, a method comprising: processing an intermediate taxonomy with respect to a target taxonomy to determine relationship values between intermediate taxonomy categories represented in the intermediate taxonomy and target taxonomy categories represented in the target taxonomy; selecting a subset of selected categories from the intermediate taxonomy categories based on a relevance of individual selected categories to individual target taxonomy categories, wherein selecting the subset comprises computing one or more scores for the individual intermediate taxonomy categories and selecting the subset of selected categories based at least in part on the one or more scores, and wherein the one or more scores for the individual intermediate taxonomy categories comprise at least one probability score that corresponds to a probability of at least one intermediate taxonomy category generating one or more of the target taxonomy categories; and using the relationship values to provide a bridging classifier for use in an online query processing state that relates a query to at least one of the target taxonomy categories based on individual target taxonomy category relationships to individual selected categories.