Index Navigator: Search Engine with Reasoning for Understanding and Expressing User's Changing Mind

摘要

When a search engine user becomes interested in a new area for him/herself, it is difficult for the user to enter a query precisely expressing the interest or to select areas including the interest, because he/she is just a beginner of the interest. This paper presents a system called Index Navigator, which tells areas a user is interested in, keywords he/she should enter as a query, and documents concerning his/her interest. A tough problem for such a system is to understand the user's interest from the query he/she entered. Index Navigator employs an inference method called Cost-based Cooperation of Multi-Abducers (CCMA), for understanding a user's interest from the history of the user's queries (expression of interest in incomplete keywords), even if the changing speed of the user's interest can not be estimated. With this device, Index Navigator guided the user to areas, keywords and documents relevant to his/her interest, according to the experimental results.