CONQUER: A Methodology for Context-Aware Query Processing on the World Wide Web

A major impediment to accurate information retrieval from the World Wide Web is the inability of search engines to incorporate semantics in the search process. This research presents a methodology, CONQUER (CONtext-aware QUERy processing), that enhances the semantic content of Web queries using two complementary knowledge sources: lexicons and ontologies. The methodology constructs a semantic net using the original query as a seed, and refines the net with terms from the two knowledge sources. The enhanced query, represented by the refined semantic net, can be executed by search engines. This paper describes the methodology and its implementation in a prototype. An empirical evaluation shows that queries suggested by the prototype produce more relevant results than those obtained by the original queries. The research, thus, provides a successful demonstration of the use of existing knowledge sources to enhance the semantic content of Web queries. The paper concludes by identifying potential uses of such enhancements of search technology in organizational contexts.