A method of organizing information in which the search activity of a user is monitored and such activity is used to organize articles in a subsequent search. The invention operates by assigning scores to articles under key term components in an index. As users enter search queries and select articles, the scores are altered according to, among other things, the amount of time spent inspecting an article, whether the article is the last one inspected, how many articles are ranked higher than the ...

An information retrieval system finds information in a Distributed Information System (DIS), e.g. the Internet using query learning and meta search for adding documents to resource directories contained in the DIS. A selection means generates training data characterized as positive and negative examples of a particular class of data residing in the DIS. A learning means generates from the training data at least one query that can be submitted to any one of a plurality of search engines for searc...

A method and system for presenting a group of objects in a ranking order. Objects are ranked according to user preferences by first observing the access order of a related group of objects in relation to a predetermined access hypothesis. A user preference model is then adapted to correspond to any deviations between the access order and the access hypothesis for the related group of objects. Next, object preferences are calculated for each of the objects to be ranked according to the preference...

A method and system for querying hierarchically classified data. The system first receives a query request and then identifies classifications of the data that may satisfy the received query request. The system then displays the identified classifications. In response to selection of a displayed classification, the system displays sub-classifications when the selected classification has sub-classifications and displays the data within the classification when the selected classification has no su...

A system and method for arranging clusters in a display by theme. Themes are found within a plurality of clusters. There are one or more concepts per theme and one or more documents per cluster. Those clusters that meet a best fit criteria are assigned by theme into a set of spines with no more than one spine formed per theme. Those spines that are unique from the other spines are retained in the set. The spines that were retained in the set are arranged in a display.

A method for querying metadata associated with media, such as multimedia and/or streaming media, on a computer network includes separating the metadata into keywords. The keywords are compared with valid keywords. A score is calculated in accordance with the degree of similarity between the keywords and valid keywords. If the degree of similarity is above a threshold, the metadata is qualified as valid metadata. Valid metadata is available for comparison and correction of other (invalid) metadat...

Methods and systems are provided for performing a comparative search. In one example, the comparative search is performed over a network, such as the web, or a database. In one exemplary implementation, a user transmits a plurality of queries which represent the topics that a user wants to compare, and a computing system can automatically retrieve and rank web pages or documents based on both their relevance to queries and the comparative contents they contain. In one such example, the comparati...

Techniques are described for generating dimension information in hierarchical form. A computer-implemented system, for example, includes a data store having multidimensional data. The multidimensional data includes a data cube having a dimension. The system further includes an executable software module that accesses the data store and generates hierarchy data describing a hierarchy of the dimension of the data cube. The software module generates the hierarchy data so that the hierarchy data is ...

A process and system for metasearching on a distributed network activated by a request executed on a client device to request a metasearch engine to send at least one search query to a plurality of server devices, which may be search engines, the at least one search query comprising at least one keyword phrase, comprising at least one keyword, comprising incorporating, by the metasearch engine, received search results into at least one display list corresponding to the at least one keyword phras...

A method of organizing information in which the search activity of users is monitored and such activity is used to suggest additional key terms for addition to a search query. The invention operates by assigning scores to key term groupings in an index. As users enter search queries of two or more key terms, the scores are altered. The scores are then used in subsequent searches to suggest other key terms which can be added to the search query to narrow the search. As millions of people use the ...