Patent ID: 8126839

Claim:
A method comprising: with at least one computing device: obtaining one or more electrical signals representing hierarchical structure information associated with a first ranking function of a first search engine and a first search domain, wherein said first search domain comprises a multidimensional data space and said hierarchical structure information partitions said multidimensional data space; obtaining one or more electrical signals representing first training data associated with said first search domain; obtaining one or more electrical signals representing second training data associated with a second search domain; generating one or more electrical signals representing adapted hierarchical structure information associated with said second search domain from said one or more electrical signals representing hierarchical structure information based, at least in part, on a distribution of said first training data and a distribution of second training data; and establishing a second ranking function in a second search engine associated with said second search domain based, at least in part, on said one or more electrical signals representing adapted hierarchical structure information.