SEARCHING, SORTING, AND DISPLAYING VIDEO CLIPS AND SOUND FILES BY RELEVANCE
A documents database has a plurality of documents, including but not limited to text files, video clips and sound files. Each document is associated with at least one category of a plurality of categories in a categories database, and each category has at least one keyword. A search request having at least one search term is received from a user, and a categories database is searched for categories having a keyword corresponding to the user search term to identify first level categories. The other keywords from the identified first level categories are retrieved and the documents database is searched for documents having a user search term or a retrieved keyword. The identified documents are then ranked and presented to the user. Other search expansion techniques, and display techniques, are also discussed.
1 . A method of ranking documents produced in response to a search request to a search engine, the search request comprising a plurality of search terms, the method comprising:
scoring the documents in accordance with a predetermined scoring process;
altering the scoring of the documents based upon at least one characteristic selected from the following characteristics: a normalized average rating for the document based upon ratings of the document by users who have accessed the document, the document type, the source of the document, the number of times the document has been accessed, the primary person featured in the document, the title of the primary person featured in the document, or the political office of the primary person featured in the document; and
ranking the documents in accordance with the results of the altered scoring.
2 . The method of claim 1 wherein the document type is a predetermined one selected from the group consisting of a speech, a town-hall meeting, a debate, an advertisement, and an interview.
3 . The method of claim 1 wherein the source of the document is a predetermined one selected from the group consisting of a candidate for a political office, the current holder of a political office, a former holder of a political office, a media organization, a special interest group, a political party, and from a user of the search engine.
4 . The method of claim 1 wherein the primary person featured in the document is a predetermined one selected from the group consisting of a candidate for a political office, the current holder of a political office, and a former holder of a political office.
5 . The method of claim 1 wherein the title of the primary person featured in the document is a predetermined one selected from the group consisting of President, Vice President, presidential press secretary, presidential cabinet member, other presidential administration person, other presidential officials, foreign head of state, foreign ambassador, United States senator, United States representative, a major national political figure, a major national political advisor, a major media figure, a military commander, a state governor, a state lieutenant governor, other major state political figure, a major state media figure, a state senator, a state representative, a state department secretary, a county commissioner, a city commissioner, a county official, a city official, a city mayor, and a city councilperson.
6 . The method of claim 1 and further comprising applying event condition criteria to the documents to change the scoring of at least one document.
7 . The method of claim 6 wherein the event condition criteria is applied to remove at least one document prior to ranking the documents.
8 . The method of claim 6 wherein applying event condition criteria comprises:
reading an event condition associated with a document;
if the event condition has occurred then either discarding the document or changing the scoring of the document.
9 . The method of claim 8 wherein the event condition is a date.
10 . The method of claim 8 wherein the event condition is an election.
11 . The method of claim 8 wherein the event condition is a sports game.
12 . The method of claim 8 wherein the event condition is a championship game.
13 . The method of claim 6 further comprising discarding the document if the scoring of the document is below a predetermined threshold.
14 . The method of claim 6 wherein the scoring of the document is reduced.
15 . The method of claim 6 wherein the scoring of the document is abruptly reduced.
16 . The method of claim 6 wherein the scoring of the document is reduced over a predetermined period of time.
17 . The method of claim 6 wherein applying event condition criteria comprises:
reading an event condition associated with a document;
if the event condition has not occurred then increasing the scoring of the document.
18 . The method of claim 17 wherein the scoring of the document is increased over a predetermined period of time occurring before the event condition.