Improving Search Query Matching for Electronic TV Program Guide Data Extraction

This paper describes a system for searching the Web-based Japanese TV program guide. The system features using morphological parsing and part-of-speech analysis to locate words with nominal and attributive semantic features in the query. Such words are matched mandatorily when searching the TV program guide text, while other words are matched optionally. Moreover, certain words and morphemes are removed from the query as they are considered to have little semantic value. The system checks every query against a stop list of such words and morphemes. Other processing methods, e.g. reversing the search phrase word order and allowing "zero or more words" between the search target words, are also utilized. The present paper uses TV guide search examples to demonstrate how the proposed method can improve Japanese TV program data search results. The paper also contains a few ideas about ways the method could be used for other languages.