Abstract: A search system for searching for electronic documents, and providing a search result in response to a search query is provided. The search system includes a processor, a user interface module adapted to receive a search query from a user, the search query having at least one search query term, and a query processing module that analyzes the search query term to identify candidate synonym words. The query processing module also determines which of the candidate synonym words are equivalent terms to the search query term, and in a same sense as the search query term. In addition, the search system includes a search engine that executes a search based on the search query term and the equivalent terms.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for automatically generating tags for digital content are provided. The method is adapted to be run on a computer, which is an example of the type of apparatus which may generate the tags. The generated tags describe the digital content, and may be used as topics for the content to organize, retrieve, and process the content. The tag generation begins by accessing content from a content collection unit and a tags candidate tag database unit, which are then processed using techniques from computational linguistics in a multi-pass process that generates sets of tags, then refines and normalizes them. Finally, scores are generated and stored along with the tags.