Exploration of Web Search Results Based on the Formal Concept Analysis

In this paper, we present an approach to support exploratory search by structuring search results based on concept lattices, which are created on the fly using advanced methods from the area of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). The main aim of the approach is to organize query based search engine results (e.g. web documents) as a hierarchy of clusters that are composed of documents with similar attributes. The concept lattice provides a structured view on the query-related domains and hence can improve the understanding of document properties and shared features. Additionally, we applied a fuzzy extension of FCA in order to support the usage of different types of attributes within the analyzed query results set. The approach has been integrated into an interactive web search interface. It provides a smooth integration of keyword-based web search and interactive visualization of concept lattice and its concepts in order to support complex search tasks.