Patent Document ID: 9495460
Application ID: 12473158

Base Claim:
1. A method at an information retrieval system arranged to retrieve results from a plurality of different sources comprising: at an input, receiving a query; at an output, issuing the query to the plurality of different sources, at least one of which is a public domain search engine and at least one of which is a private domain search engine; at the input, receiving a results list from each of the plurality of different sources; determining whether to merge said results lists based on a relevancy determination made using a merging model; forming, by a processor, a complete results list from the received results lists using the merging model, forming the complete results list comprising forming a merged results list using a merging model in a data structure comprising a plurality of weighted event variables describing a complete results list presentation event, the merging model comprising a decision process that determines whether or not to merge results based on the relevance of the results, the decision process deciding to not merge results when a difference between a first measure of relevance of a first set of results and a second measure of relevance of a second set of results satisfies a threshold condition; arranging a user interface to present the complete results list; observing user behavior in response to the presented complete results list; and using the observed user behavior to update the merging model.

---

Claim 2:
2. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the query is received from a user, wherein the method further comprises receiving user information for that user, and wherein the merging model takes into account the user information.