Unsupervised Discovery of Coordinate Terms for Multiple Aspects from Search Engine Query Logs

A method is described for discovering coordinate terms, such as "Honda'' and "Nissan,'' for a given term, such as "Toyota,'' as well as their common topic terms, from the query logs of a Web search engine. Coordinate terms are good candidates for use in making comparisons. A HITS-based algorithm is applied to a bipartite graph between coordinate term candidates and co-occurrence patterns to identify coordinate and topic terms. Spectral analysis is used to distinguish coordinate terms corresponding to different aspects of the search term. As a result, we can discover terms related to the terms in a search engine query that reflect the needs and interests of the user.