Patent Document ID: 20040083211
Application ID: 10689068
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. In an information retrieval system having a user, a current query, a search engine that is responsive to the current query to retrieve data generally relevant to the current query from a data collection, and data generally relevant to the current query retrieved from a target data collection, a method for refining the current query, the method comprising: indexing a subset of the retrieved data into a vector space; receiving information regarding the relevancy of a subset of the retrieved data; ranking a subset of the retrieved data in accordance with the relevancy information; forming at least one hypothesis regarding modifications to the current query, each hypothesis based at least in part on one or more of: the rankings and analysis of locations of the data in the vector space; creating at least one candidate query in accordance with at least one of the formed at least one hypothesis; applying at least one of the at least one candidate queries to the retrieved data, employing a search engine responsive to the at least one applied candidate query to retrieve data relevant to the at least one applied candidate query; ranking the data retrieved in response to the applied candidate query in accordance with the received relevancy information; comparing the ranking of data retrieved in response to the applied candidate query and the ranking of data retrieved in response to the current query with the received relevancy information choosing the query which produces results more closely matching the ranking of the retrieved data as a refined query thereby refining the current query.