APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR DISCOVERING CONTEXT GROUPS AND DOCUMENT CATEGORIES BY MINING USAGE LOGS

An apparatus is provided for relating user queries and documents. The apparatus includes a client, a server, and a database being mutually coupled to a communications pathway. The client is configured to enable a user to submit user queries to locate documents. The server has a data mining mechanism configured to receive the user queries and generate information retrieval sessions. The database stores data in the form of usage logs generated from the information retrieval sessions. The data mining mechanism includes a clustering algorithm operative to identify context groups and usage categories. The data mining mechanism is operative to identify query contexts associated with individual queries from the usage logs, partition the queries into context groups having similar contexts, and compute multiple context groups associated with specific query keywords from the usage logs. A method is provided for associating user queries and documents in accordance with the apparatus.