Patent Document ID: 7779012
Application ID: 10987283

Base Claim:
1. A method for creating data for use in ranking results of a search of a plurality of pages in an intranet, each page comprising a plurality of terms arranged in a hierarchical structure, the method comprising acts of: (A) parsing the plurality of pages to identify the plurality of terms, wherein at least one page of the plurality of pages comprises a plurality of instances of a term of the plurality of terms; (B) automatically computing, for each instance of each identified term and for each page in the plurality of pages in which the identified term appears, a specificity value of the instance, the specificity value being computed, for each instance of the identified term on the page, based upon a combination of a tag parameter associated with the instance and a term level of the instance within the hierarchical structure of the page, the term level being measured from at least one root level of the page; (C) the act of combining, for each identified term and for each page in the plurality of pages in which the identified term appears, the computed specificity values of the instances of the identified term within the page to produce a combined computed specificity value of the identified term; (D) storing, for each identified term and for each page in the plurality of pages in which the identified term appears, the combined computed specificity value of the identified term and an identifier for the page; and (E) ranking a plurality of matching pages in the plurality of pages, the matching pages returned in response to a search query performed on the plurality of pages, the ranking based on a comparison, for each matching page, between the combined computed specificity value stored for an identified term matching a term of the query and a degree of specificity associated with the query, wherein the matching pages are identified as including an identified term matching a term of the query based on the identifier for the page stored for the identified term.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the hierarchical structure comprises a plurality of levels, and wherein automatically computing the specificity value of the instance of the identified term further comprises determining a number of levels in a shortest path from a level of the at least one root level to the term level of the instance of the identified term.