초록 ▼

A method and apparatus are provided for retrieving documents from a collection of documents based on information other than the contents of a desired document. The collection of documents, which may be a hypertext system or documents available via the World Wide Web, is indexed. In one embodiment, a

A method and apparatus are provided for retrieving documents from a collection of documents based on information other than the contents of a desired document. The collection of documents, which may be a hypertext system or documents available via the World Wide Web, is indexed. In one embodiment, an indexing process of a search engine receives one or more specifications that identify documents, or document locations, and non-content information such as a tag word or code word. The indexing process searches the index to identify all documents in the index that match one or more of the specifications. If a match is found, the tag word is added to the index, and information about the matching document is stored in the index in association with the tag word. A search query is submitted to the search engine. The search query is automatically modified to add a reference to the tag word, such as a query term that will exclude any index entry for a document associated with the tag word. The search is executed against the index, and a set of search results is generated. Accordingly, the search results automatically exclude all documents associated with the tag word. These techniques may be used, for example, to implement a Web search service that produces more accurate search results or that prevents certain documents, such as pornographic materials, from appearing in search results.

대표청구항 ▼

1. A method of selecting electronic documents from among a plurality of electronic documents, the method comprising the steps of:storing a tag word in an index in association with information identifying an electronic document, in which the tag word comprises data that does not appear in a content o

1. A method of selecting electronic documents from among a plurality of electronic documents, the method comprising the steps of:storing a tag word in an index in association with information identifying an electronic document, in which the tag word comprises data that does not appear in a content of the electronic document; receiving a search query; modifying the search query to create a modified search query by adding to the search query a search term that references the tag word; and creating a set of search results by searching the index based on the modified search query; wherein the step of storing includes the steps of: receiving data that indicates one or more tag words and criteria to be used to determine which of the plurality of documents should be associated with each of the one or more tag words, and in which at least a portion of the data is expressed in a wildcard format; retrieving a location identifier of each of the documents that are indexed in the index; matching each location identifier to each of the criteria; and when one location identifier matches one of the criteria, storing, in the index, information associating such location identifier with one or more of the tag words.