Query relaxation and answer integration for cross-media meta-searches

The amount of information available on the Web has increased dramatically. This information comes in a wide variety of media types. Therefore, to retrieve information on a topic using conventional search engines, users must search many sites from several different aspects. Thus, it is important to integrate and organize this information from the different sites. We propose an integration and organization system based on a query relaxation approach for cross-media meta-search engines. Frequently, the parameters for information retrieval are too specific or exacting to generate any relevant sites. However, by gradually relaxing the search terms used for information retrieval, we can solve this problem while narrowing the search to sites that are most relevant to the subject being researched. We show several examples of how the relaxation approach works as well as ways in which it can be applied. We also demonstrate the advantages of our approach and future work for this research.