Patent ID: 7752243

Claim:
A computer implemented method of expanding a search query, the computer comprising at least one processor for executing computer readable instructions stored in a memory, the method comprising comprising: receiving at the computer a search query comprising at least one search term; accessing a concept knowledge base data structure from a memory storage device, the concept knowledge base data structure comprising: having a plurality of concept data objects each associated with a concept described by one or more computer readable documents; a plurality of term data objects, each term data object defining a term in the one or more computer readable documents; and a plurality of edge data objects, each edge data object indicating an association of each of the term data objects with the concept data objects, each edge data object containing a weight indicating a normalized frequency of occurrence of the term of the term data object in the one or more computer readable documents describing the concept associated with the term; generating a first term set containing term data objects from the concept knowledge base data structure wherein each term data object in the first term set matches one or more of the at least one search term; generating a concept set containing concept data objects from the concept knowledge base data structure wherein each concept data object in the concept set is associated with one or more of the term data objects in the first term set; generating a second term set containing term data objects from the concept knowledge base data structure wherein each term data object in the second term set is associated with one or more of the concept data objects in the concept set; generating a visual representation for display on a display device by graphically representing the term data objects in the first term set and the term data objects in the second term set as term nodes and the concept data objects in the concept set as concept nodes connected by lines based upon the associated edge data object weight connecting the term nodes and the concept nodes and wherein one or more of the term data objects can be selected to add the term contained in the selected term data object to the at least one term of the search query by selecting the term node corresponding to the selected term data object; and receiving a selection of one of the term data objects in the second term set, adding the term contained in the selected term data object to the search query.