Taxonomy-based context conveyance for web search

Abstract

Taxonomy-based search services such as web directories are good starting points for users to search information needed from the web. In this paper we propose a method employing the search services to facilitate searches in any web search interfaces that support Boolean queries. The proposed method enables one to convey his current search context on taxonomy of a taxonomy-based search service to the searches conducted with the web search interfaces. The basic idea is to learn the search context in the form of a Boolean condition that is commonly accepted by many web search interfaces, and use the condition to modify the user query before forwarding it to the web search interfaces. To guarantee that the modified query can always be processed by the web search interfaces and to make the method adaptive to different user requirements on search result effectiveness, we have developed a new fast classification rule learning algorithm. Extensive experiments show that the proposed method can significantly improve the search result effectiveness of the web search interfaces. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.