Intelligent Interactions with Search Results: Getting Beyond Those Blue Results Lists

We have been developing more sophisticated, interactive displays for search with faceted navigation, personalization, and other techniques, but we still seem stuck with those (ir)relevancy lists, along with some simple People and Organization facets. To really get beyond those blue lists, we need to dive more deeply into the actual meaning within those documents with a whole variety of tools and methods, including particularly text analytics tools.

This talk, based on two recent projects with content ranging from construction proposals to Government policy documents, describes a set of methods that combined can move us beyond traditional search results lists.

These methods and approaches include:

Dynamically defining sections of documents using a variety of indicators (formatting, Sub-title text, etc.)
Applying semantic methods to those sections to add an additional dimension to relevancy calculations
Creating multiple and dynamic views into the document that enabled users to interact with search results in a variety of ways
Using the dynamic views to offer deeper personalization

Tom Reamy is currently the Chief Knowledge Architect and founder of KAPS Group [http://www.kapsgroup.com], a group of knowledge architecture, text analytics, and taxonomy consultants. He has 20 years of experience in information projects of various kinds. He has published a number of articles in a variety of journals and is a frequent speaker at knowledge management, taxonomy, and text analytics conferences.

For the last 10 years, his primary focus has been on text analytics, helping clients select the best text analytics software, as well as doing text analytics development projects that include applications such as call support, voice of the customer, enterprise search, and content management.

When not writing or developing text analytics projects, he can usually be found at the bottom of the ocean in Carmel, photographing strange critters.