William S Liu

US Patent:

7779013, Aug 17, 2010

Filed:

Nov 4, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/267004

Inventors:

Ed H. Chi - Palo Alto CA, US
William S. Liu - Cupertino CA, US

Assignee:

Xerox Corporation - Norwalk CT

International Classification:

G06F 7/00
G06F 17/30

US Classification:

707748

Abstract:

A system and method for determining a quantitative measure of search efficiency of related Web pages. An information goal is specified. A target Web page is identified within a plurality of Web pages. The information goal is searched via a search function in the Web pages to identify potential Web pages that include at least one hyperlink referencing and proximal cues relating to distal content included in another potential Web page. An activation network is formed. A directed graph is built, including nodes corresponding to the potential Web pages and arcs corresponding to the hyperlinks. A weight is assigned to each arc to represent a probability of traversal of the corresponding hyperlink based on a relatedness of keywords in the information goal to the proximal cues. A traversal through the activation network to the node corresponding to the target Web page is evaluated as a quantitative measure of search efficiency.