US Patent 7856441 Search systems and methods using enhanced contextual queries

Systems and methods are provided for implementing searches using contextual information associated with a Web page (or other document) that a user is viewing when a query is entered. The page includes a contextual search interface that has an associated context vector representing content of the page. When the user submits a search query via the contextual search interface, the query and the context vector are both provided to the query processor and used in responding to the query. The context vector can be enhanced by the addition of terms related to one or more terms appearing in the context vector or the query.