METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONSTRUCTING A QUERY BASED UPON CONCEPTS ASSOCIATED WITH ONE OR MORE SEARCH TERMS

A method and apparatus are provided to efficiently generate a fulsome query in order to increase the recall and/or precision provided by the search. A method may construct a query by receiving the one or more initial search terms and then defining a concept for each search term. In order to define a concept, the method may determine if a concept associated with a respective search term has been previously defined. In an instance in which a concept associated with a respective search term has been previously defined, the method at least initially utilizes the previously defined concept. However, in an instance in which a concept associated with a respective search term has not been previously defined, the method constructs the concept based on terms related to the respective search term. The method may then combine the concepts defined for the one or more search terms to generate the query.