Patent Document ID: 7809715
Application ID: 12103126

Base Claim:
1. A method for handling abbreviations in web queries, the method comprising: building a dictionary of a plurality of possible word expansions for a plurality of potential abbreviations related to query terms received or anticipated to be received by a search engine; accepting a query including an abbreviation; expanding the abbreviation into one of the plurality of word expansions if a probability that the expansion is correct is above a threshold value, wherein the probability is determined by taking into consideration a context of the abbreviation within the query, wherein the context comprises at least anchor text; and sending the query with the expanded abbreviation to the search engine to generate a search results page related to the query.

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Claim 9:
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the dictionary is built offline, the method further comprising: retrieving anchor texts that point to a same web page; and extracting abbreviations and corresponding expansions within the anchor text that are formed as initialisms.