October 9, 2009

Patent Issued to Local.com for Enhanced Directory Assistance Services

Local.com has received a new patent for an Enhanced Directory Assistance (EDA) Services method and system. In a statement, Local.com described the patent, number 7,596,218, as:

Issued on September 29, 2009, the patent describes a system and method for maintaining a dynamic index for a telephone directory assistance system. The system enables advertisers to dynamically control whether a listing - and/or one or more of a keyword index, a localization index, and a position control index - associated with the advertiser is included in an EDA request, and in what position the associated listing is returned in response to the request.

Local.com hopes the new patent will provide additional revenue opportunities.

"Local.com has a patent that covers an important monetization opportunity in this burgeoning market, and it is complementary to our existing local search patents. We look forward to expanding our relationships with companies in order to deliver monetization of innovative new products and services to this marketplace," said Heath Clarke, Chairman and CEO, Local.com.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 10, 2008

Is Microsoft Buying Yahoo For Overture's PPC Patents?

David Utter over at WebProNews has written an insightful piece on the possibility Microsoft wants Yahoo mainly for the old Overture patents it holds, in particular patent 361.

Between his article which clarifies much of Usman Latif's posts on the topic as well as Latif's own detailed post from 2005 when Google fired the employee for blogging - shows a very good conspiracy and Machivellian business theory.

Is 'patent 361' the Holy Grail of our industry? Does it hold the power of the search engine industry? Could we see a long-haired Tom Hanks snooping around San Jose this year looking for clues?

When you see the government investigating the Yahoo/Google deal, and the cries about the possible Microsoft buying of Yahoo, this makes for even more high drama.

Is Jerry Yang refusing Microsoft advances because he knows the secrets. Is patent 361 the National Treasure like source of all riches in paid search?

This definitely gives a different perspective to the entire situation. I am waiting for David Brown to write the novel.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

July 2, 2007

Even More Local Search Patents

When we wrote last week about Local.com's new local search patent, we pointed out that there were far too many patents being issued in that space. That's only gotten worse this week, with another local search patent awarded to Local.com, this time for ad-supported 411 calls.

Once again, this patent seems to be in direct conflict with an existing patent, one from Jingle Networks.

There's either going to have to be some litigation, or consolidation of businesses or patents between the various players. In the meantime, it's the users and advertisers who will suffer, since the confusion in the marketplace and looming lawsuits will only serve to scare off advertisers and slow the growth of local search.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:15 PM | Permalink

June 25, 2007

Local.com Gets Location-based Search Patent

The local search space is becoming a patent battleground. in the third local search patent to surface in the last month, Local.com today announced that it's been awarded a patent for "indexing and retrieving web-related information by geographical location."

Last month, Jingle Networks won a patent for elements of its 1-800-FREE-411 service, which serves targeted voice ads from related businesses and competitors when a user looks up a local business on its service.

Earlier this month, London-based Geomas sued Verizon and its Idearc spin-off, claiming that Idearc's Superpages.com infringes on a patent it owns for location-based search.

It's not likely that all of these seemingly overlapping patents, and other emerging patents, can all be enforced. The local search space is certainly overcrowded with start-ups, so a little bit of patent-enforcement might help with consolidation in the market. On the other hand, it can also stifle the growth of the industry, if the major players get involved in an all-out patent war. It would be best for the industry if these issues could get sorted out swiftly and decisively, but that's rarely the case in situations like these.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:52 AM | Permalink

March 20, 2007

Google Blog Search patent application reveals keys to ranking

Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea reports that a patent application for Google Blog Search reveals some of the factors that can impact ranking. The two major factors are the relevance of the post, based upon the query used by a searcher, and a blog's quality score, which is independent of the query terms used in the search. Good eye, Bill.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 11:38 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

The Interestingness of Social Networks

Interestingness is a great name for a ranking algorithm. It's what Yahoo's photo-based social network Flickr uses to show which images the community finds the most "interesting."

Techdirt considers the impact that a couple of recent Yahoo patent applications filed for in February, and published last week (which I wrote about at SEO by the Sea), might have upon the growth of social networks. They reference the thoughts of Thomas Hawk, CEO of Zooomr, who weighs in on the topic in Should Yahoo Own Social Search and Rank in a Web 2.0 World?

We've seen the major search engines compete with each other in the face of patented algorithms, following their own paths to returning relevant results to their users. Social networks shouldn't find interestingness to be an impediment to letting their communities decide together what is interesting or not. Hopefully these patent applications will inspire other social networks to follow their own paths, too.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 6:10 PM | Permalink

October 6, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: October 6, 2006 - Google Takes Over the Patent Office

There were some interesting new patent applications this week from Yahoo, Microsoft, and IBM, but nothing on the scale of the outpouring of intellectual property published and assigned to Google - I uncovered 15 new patent applications from the Mountain View search giant. I'll address patent applications from those others in a later post. This post looks at Google's filings.

Some of the topics covered include:

Natural language questions and answers from a search engine,
Query rankings and mid-page refinements,
A detailed personalization system,
Advertising and email contacts amongst members of a social network,
Bringing together advertisers and advertising agents,
Addressing different audience segments with ads,
Improving the value of pay-per-impression advertising,
Data embedded in hardware devices to help target advertisments, and;
Sharing Settings and other data across browsers (and Office applications).

A Question Answering Search

I thought of Danny's post from yesterday, Hello Natural Language Search, My Old Over-Hyped Search Friend, when reading this patent application. Will people ask actual questions to a search engine if the anticipate that they will receive relevant answers? Here's an exploration of that question:

User interface for facts query engine with snippets from information sources that include query terms and answer terms Invented by Andrew William Hogue US Patent Application 20060224582 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 31, 2005

Abstract

A method and a system for providing snippets of source documents of an answer to a fact query are disclosed. Snippets of source documents may be provided in response to a user request for the source documents from which the fact answer to a fact query was extracted. The snippets include the terms of the fact query and terms of the answer. The snippets may be displayed along with Uniform Resource Locators (URL's) of the source documents.

Middle Page Query Refinements

Danny also mentioned in his rant the need for better query refinements, and how Google has been offering them for a couple of years. (His timing is pretty good.)

Just how does Google decide to present some of the suggested alternative queries that it shows in the middle of some results pages? What triggers their appearance, and determines which queries and results appear? How are alternative queries ranked?

I examined this patent filing in considerable detail at SEO by the Sea, in a post titled Google's Query Rank, and Query Revisions on Search Result Pages.

Query revision using known highly-ranked queries Invented by David R. Bailey, Alexis J. Battle, David Ariel Cohn, Barbara Engelhardt, P. Pandurang Nayak US Patent Application 20060224554 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: November 22, 2005

Abstract

An information retrieval system includes a query revision architecture providing one or more query revisers, each of which implements a query revision strategy. A query rank reviser suggests known highly-ranked queries as revisions to a first query by initially assigning a rank to all queries, and identifying a set of known highly-ranked queries (KHRQ). Queries with a strong probability of being revised to a KHRQ are identified as nearby queries (NQ). Alternative queries that are KHRQs are provided as candidate revisions for a given query. For alternative queries that are NQs, the corresponding known highly-ranked queries are provided as candidate revisions.

Google Personalization

After more than a few hours, I'm just partially into breaking down the processes described in the following six patent applications detailing some of the things that Google is looking at in a personalized search system. They share a single detailed (and long) description and abstract, and were all originally filed on March 31, 2005 and published on October 5, 2006. The claims section in each application different and explain how the different documents play a role in the overall personalization scheme.

Systems and methods for analyzing a user's web history Invented by Andrew Fikes, Jeffrey L. Korn, Oren E. Zamir, Lilly Christine Irani US Patent Application 20060224583

Systems and methods for modifying search results based on a user's history Invented by Oren E. Zamir, Jeffrey L. Korn, and Andrew Fikes US Patent Application 20060224587

Systems and methods for combining sets of favorites Invented Oren E. Zamir, Jeffrey L. Korn, and Andrew Fikes US Patent Application 20060224608

Systems and methods for providing subscription-based personalization Invented by Jeffrey L. Korn, Oren E. Zamir, and Andrew Fikes US Patent Application 20060224615

Systems and methods for managing multiple user accounts Invented by Jeffrey L. Korn, Oren E. Zamir, and Andrew Fikes US Patent Application 20060224624

Systems and methods for providing a graphical display of search activity Invented Andrew Fikes, Jeffrey L. Korn, Oren E. Zamir, and Lilly Christine Irani, Avni Upendra Shah US Patent Application 20060224938

Abstract

A user's prior searching and browsing activities are recorded for subsequent use. A user may examine the user's prior searching and browsing activities in a number of different ways, including indications of the user's prior activities related to advertisements. A set of search results may be modified in accordance with the user's historical activities. The user's activities may be examined to identify a set of preferred locations. The user's set of activities may be shared with one or more other users. The set of preferred locations presented to the user may be enhanced to include the preferred locations of one or more other users. A user's browsing activities may be monitored from one or more different client devices or client application. A user's browsing volume may be graphically displayed.

Social Networks

Both of these next two documents mention Orkut, as well as some other social networks.

Methods and systems for member-created advertisement in a member network Invented by Kevin David Fox US Patent Application 20060224446 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 29, 2005

Abstract

Methods and systems for members of a member network to create and target advertisement to other members of the member network. A member can target advertisement to other members in the member network by establishing a member profile that includes associations and/or nexuses with the targeted members. Fees can be charged to members who create and disseminate advertisement to other members in the member network.

Methods and systems for providing current email addresses and contact information for members within a social network Invented by Kevin David Fox and Duane Scott Hess US Patent Application 20060224675 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 30, 2005

Abstract

Methods and systems for providing current email addresses or contact information to members within a social network are described. In one described method, an email program application requests an email address for a member within a social network. Using profile information associated with the member, the email address is provided to the email program application which sent the request. The email address is then entered into the send-to parameter field of an email message. In another described method, contact information associated with a first member of a social can be provided to a second member of the social network. The contact information is provided if the relationship between the first and second members is an authorized relationship. The contact information associated with the first member can be used to update the contact information for the first member in an electronic address book associated with the second member.

Advertising

Some past patent applications made it appear that Google wanted to help make it easier for advertisers to create their own advertising campaigns and ad copy. This next document looks instead at making it easier for advertisers to find people willing to help them with those activities.

Networking advertisers and agents for ad authoring and/or ad campaign management Invented by Ross Koningstein and Sumit Agarwal US Patent Application 20060224444 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 30, 2005

Abstract

As online ads are becoming technically and artistically more sophisticated, advertisers will need a way to efficiently request assistance with ad creations that offer richer ad formats. An online ad business environment helps connect advertisers with ad service providers (also called agents or advisors) who can meet their needs for more complex and sophisticated ad creatives. The online ad business network may use a job listing board where advertisers can enter request for assistance and agent can view them. The business network may also include an agent directory where agents can post their profiles and services and advertisers can view them. Using the job listing board and agent directory, advertisers and agent can contact each other through contact operations available in the business network, and enter into business relationships. A payment from an advertiser to an agent may be made via the business network. The amount of compensation paid to the agent by the business network need not be equal to the amount of payment received by the advertiser.

How helpful would it be if it were easier to understand and manage the serving of ads based upon different audience segments and factors like different geographic areas, different times, different user devices, different audience demographics, etc.?

Automated offer management using audience segment information Invented by Ross Koningstein US Patent Application 20060224447 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 31, 2005

Abstract

An advertiser's management of an advertising campaign may be assisted by (a) accepting information defining a plurality of audience segments to which an advertisement may be served, (b) accepting a first offer, and (c) determining, using the first offer, a second offer associated with at least one of the plurality of audience segments. The act of determining a second offer associated with one of the plurality of audience segments may use an indication of value assigned to the one audience segment. The indication of value may be automatically determined, and/or provided by an advertiser. The indication of value may be expressed as functions, rules, and/or parameter values. The information defining a plurality of audience segments may be one or more of (a) location information, (b) user information, (c) temporal information, and (d) client device information.

Can something be done to improve the value of pay-per-impression advertising? That's the topic of this next patent application.

Adjusting an advertising cost, such as a per-ad impression cost, using a likelihood that the ad will be sensed or perceived by users Invented by Brian Axe, Gregory Joseph Badros, and Rama Ranganath US Patent Application 20060224445 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 30, 2005

Abstract

A price paid for an ad impression may be adjusted using an estimated probability that the ad will be viewed, or otherwise perceived or sensed, or using one or more factors which may be used to estimate such a probability. The price and/or probability may be adjusted using events occurring after the impression of the ad.

Data can be embedded in hardware, such as digital cameras and PDAs, and identified in software that can help an advertiser target the users of those devices. For example, I may take pictures with my camera, and then upload the images to the web with a program like Picasa, or send them to someone through Gmail. The data from the device may be included in metadata from the pictures, and might be used to send me advertisements related to my camera in some way. That's the area that this next patent application covers.

System and method for obtaining content based on data from an electronic device Invented by Michael Bryan Herf US Patent Application 20060224448 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 31, 2005

Abstract

In one embodiment, data from an electronic device is identified. The data may describe an electronic device (e.g. a hardware or software device) on which a document was created or modified, the subject matter of a document, the state of a document, or the like. Content relating to the electronic device is obtained based on the data. The content may be obtained in response to viewing, editing, printing, emailing or other accessing and/or processing of the document.

Sharing setting information and other data across browsers

Browsers collect a lot of information, such as bookmarks, security settings, web surfing history, autocomplete information, password data, location of toolbars information, and much more. It would be great to have an easy way to share this kind of information between browsers on different computers or on the same computer, to different versions of the same browser, or to different browsers (such as between Internet Explorer and Firefox. The techniques involved might even be applied to other types of applications, such as transferring settings between Microsoft Word to Powerpoint.

No mention of Google Office applications are made here, and the patent application was originally filed over a year ago, but the thought crosses my mind that it might be helpful to copy settings from Word to Writely, or from Excel to Google Spreadsheets.

Method and system for transferring web browser data between web browsers Invented by David Marmaros US Patent Application 20060224967 Published October 5, 2006 Filed: March 31, 2005

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method for transferring web browser data between web browsers includes collecting browser data pertaining to a first web browser, packaging the browser data into an intermediate format, and storing the packaged data for a subsequent import into a second web browser.

My usual reminder about patents: Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house, and some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. A percentage are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

There are times when a Google or Yahoo acquires a company to gain access to the intellectual property of that company, or the intellectual prowess and expertise of that company's employees. And sometimes patents are just purchased.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Google area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 3:40 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

New Search Patent Filings: October 4, 2006 - Using Google to find the Cable Guy

A few new patent filings from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.com. Microsoft explores the use of self organizing maps in one patent filing, and shows how those could be used to make geographic searches more relevant. They also explore URL canonicalization in another.

Google's newest patent filing expands upon Google Transit and Maps by providing information about taxi cabs, shuttles, limos, delivery trucks, moving vans, and other service vehicles.

Amazon is granted a patent for recommendation services.

Microsoft

This first patent application discusses the use of self organizing maps to increase search relevancy. It points to Self Organization of a Massive Document Collection as a reference source for readers of the patent filing, to help them understand how such a process could be implemented.

System and method for improving search relevance Invented by Christopher Weare Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060218138 Published September 28, 2006 Filed on March 25, 2005

Abstract

A system and method for performing context based document searching is provided. A grid of content tiles is constructed corresponding to a desired concept space. Each content tile is assigned a content tag and is associated with a series of feature values. The feature values are trained to correspond to various regions of the content space. Documents are associated with one or more content tags based on a comparison of document feature values with content tile feature values. A search query is modified to include one or more content tags based on the terms in the search query and/or user preferences. The search query is then matched to documents associated with content tags contained in the search query.

The ideas in the previous document from Microsoft could be used to help increase the value of some specialized searches, such as ones based upon geographical location information. This next patent application is a companion filing to that one, and relies upon the same technology to help with searches where location is important.

System and method for location based search Invented by Christopher Weare, Ashley Feniello, and Randy Kern Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060218114 Published September 28, 2006 Filed: March 25, 2005

Abstract

A system and method for performing geographic based document searching. A grid of location tiles is constructed corresponding to a desired geographic area. A location tag is assigned to each location tile. Documents are searched to identify a geographic location. The documents are associated with one or more location tags based on the location tiles corresponding to the identified geographic location. The geographic location of a search query is also identified. The search query is modified to include one or more location tags corresponding to the location of the search query. The search query is then matched to documents associated with location tags contained in the search query.

Not long ago, three researchers from Technion, including Google's Ziv Bar-Yossef, published a paper called Do not Crawl in the DUST: Different URLs with Similar Text. The following patent filing from Microsoft's Marc Najork visits some of the same territory, looking carefully at ways to pick the best single URL for pages that are substantially similar yet are at different URLs.

Systems and methods for inferring uniform resource locator (URL) normalization rules Invented by Marc Alexander Najork Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060218143 Published September 28, 2006 Filed: March 25, 2005

Abstract

Different URLs that actually reference the same web page or other web resource are detected and that information is used to only download one instance of a web page or web resource from a web site. All web pages or web resources downloaded from a web server are compared to identify which are substantially identical. Once identical web pages or web resources with different URLs are found, the different URLs are then analyzed to identify what portions of the URL are essential for identifying a particular web page or web resource, and what portions are irrelevant. Once this has been done for each set of substantially identical web pages or web resources (also referred to as an “equivalence class” herein), these per-equivalence-class rules are generalized to trans-equivalence-class rules. There are two rule-learning steps: step (1), where it is learned for each equivalence class what portions of the URLs in that class are relevant for selecting the page and what portions are not; and step (2), where the per-equivalence-class rules constructed during step (1) are generalized to rules that cover many equivalence classes. Once a rule is determined, it is applied to the class of web pages or web resources to identify errors. If there are no errors, the rule is activated and is then used by the web crawler for future crawling to avoid the download of duplicative web pages or web resources.

Google

Google has been adding cities to its transit service, provides information about traffic congestion in some areas, and has supplied driving directions for quite some time. Can they expand their services to help us hail a taxi, find out how close the Fedex truck when delivery a package, and let us know where the cable guy we are waiting for is?

User location driven identification of service vehicles Invented by Mark Crady, Michael J. Chu and Russell Y. Shoji US Patent Application 20060217885 Published September 28, 2006 Filed: March 24, 2005

Abstract

A vehicle position aggregation system receives position information for service vehicles from various fleet management systems, and maintains the current location of the vehicles in a database, including information identifying each vehicle's associated fleet and related contact information. End users can query the vehicle position aggregation system to obtain information about service vehicles in the vicinity of the user's input location.

Amazon.com

There have been a few patent filings from Amazon on recommendation systems. This one looks at similarities between items to make recommendations.

Personalized recommendations of items represented within a database Invented by Jennifer A. Jacobi, Eric A. Benson, and Gregory D. Linden Assigned to Amazon.com US Patent 7,113,917 Granted September 26, 2006 Filed: May 7, 2001

Abstract

A computer-implemented service recommends items to a user based on items previously selected by the user, such as items previously purchased, viewed, or placed in an electronic shopping cart by the user. The items may, for example, be products represented within a database of an online merchant. In one embodiment, the service generates the recommendations using a previously generated table that maps items to respective lists of "similar" items. To generate the table, historical data indicative of users' affinities for particular items is processed periodically to identify correlations between item interests of users (e.g., items A and B are similar because a large portion of those who selected A also selected B). Personal recommendations are generated by accessing the table to identify items similar to those selected by the user. In one embodiment, items are recommended based on the current contents of a user's shopping cart.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 6:11 PM | Permalink

August 29, 2006

New Search Patent Filings: August 29, 2006 - Yahoo looks at Interactive TV and VOIP

Yahoo patent filings include one detailing bidding for placement in paid search filed this past April, another that details a very interactive environment for watching television programming, a third describing a method of soliciting consumer reviews, and a granted patent for a Voice Over IP (VOIP) system that doesn't require Telephony Interface Cards.

Microsoft had two new patent applications published, including one which provides a means of suggesting alternative spellings for words, and another that interacts with searchers to help them construct queries.

IBM filed a patent application for building social networks within a business organization, and was granted a patent for a method of checking pages shown in search results for viruses.

America Online looks at the classification of queries in a manner which seems very similar to the editorial opinion decisions made in a recently granted Google patent.

Mobile search company Geovector comes up with a way to make quick hyperlinked image maps from mobile phones with cameras.

Yahoo

System and method for enabling multi-element bidding for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine Invented by Ted Meisel, Peter Savich and Thomas A. Soulanille Assigned to Overture US Patent Application 20060190354 Published August 24, 2006 Filed on April 24, 2006

Abstract

A system and method for enabling information providers using a computer network such as the Internet to influence a position for a search listing within a search result list generated by an Internet search engine. A database stores accounts for the network information providers. Each account contains contact and billing information for a network information provider. In addition, each account contains at least one search listing having at least three components: a description, a search term comprising one or more keywords, and a bid amount. The network information provider may add, delete, or modify a search listing after authenticated login. A search term relevant to the content of the web site or other information source to be listed is first selected. A search listing includes the search term and a description. A bidding process occurs when the network information provider enters a new bid amount for a search listing. The system and method then compares the bid amount with all other bid amounts for the same search term, and generates a rank value for all search listings having that search term. The rank value determines where the listing will appear on the search results list page that is generated in response to a query of the search term by a searcher.

Framework for providing ancillary content in a television environment Invented by Michael Mills, Philip Mckay, Michael Hoch, Kumiko Tanaka Toft, and Rod Perkins US Patent Application 20060184579 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on January 5, 2006

Abstract

The present invention provides functionality for retrieving ancillary content associated with the content delivered to a given user's client device. According to one embodiment, the method of the present invention comprises retrieving the context of a given user and identifying a plurality of characteristics associated with the user's context. The one or more characteristics associated with the user's context are displayed to the user and the user may select from the displayed characteristics. One or more items of content are retrieved based upon the user's selection and presented to the user on the user's client device.

Group polling for consumer review Invented by Norman Shi Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060190475 Published August 24, 2006 Filed on December 20, 2005

Abstract

Using a computer system comprising clients at which users interface to the computer system and at least one review server that maintains a collection of reviews, each associated with a presentation, a method of collecting the reviews including providing a first presentation to a first user via a first client associated with the first user; maintaining a trust network linking the first user to the other users in the trust network; receiving a request for a review from the first user via the first client; routing a request for a review to the users in the trust network who are linked to the first user in the trust network; and saving at least some of the returned reviews in the collection of review.

Voice integrated VOIP system Invented by Madhu Yarlagadda, Patrick Loo and David H. Nakayama Assigned to Yahoo United States Patent 7,095,733 Granted August 22, 2006 Filed on September 11, 2000

Abstract

An integrated VoIP unified message processing system includes a voice platform that processes data in native VoIP format. There is no use of hardware telephone interface cards (TICs) or software transcoding to transform data to PCM or other formats. Cost reductions are achieved by the elimination of expensive dedicated hardware and scalability is achieved by obviating the need for software transcoding.

Microsoft

Query spelling correction method and system Invented by Justin Harmon, Kyle G. Peltonen and Shajan Dasan Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060190447 Published August 24, 2006 Filed on February 22, 2005

Abstract

A method and system for providing to a user a set of alternative query suggestions is disclosed. The method, system and computer readable medium product in accordance with embodiments of the invention includes generating an index of all words in a corpus of documents available to the application, generating a popularity table for the index having a popularity value for each word in the index based on occurrences of the word in the corpus, comparing each entry in the popularity table to suggestions from a word generator, compiling a lexicon of word generator suggestion words that are found in the popularity table, submitting each word in the search query to the word generator to determine suggestion words, and displaying to the user one or more of the suggestion words from the lexicon that are more popular than the query word.

Dynamic client interaction for search Invented by Matthew R. Richardson and Robert J. Ragno Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060190436 Published August 24, 2006 Filed on June 23, 2005

Abstract

A system for guiding a search for information is presented. The system comprises a user interface that accepts a phrase and receives at least one suggestion based at least in part on the phrase. The system also includes a phrase suggestion engine that matches the phrase with the at least one suggestion. Methods of using the system are also provided.

IBM

Method, system and program product for building social networks Invented by Margaret A. Strong and Albert Tien Yuen Wong Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060190536 Published August 24, 2006 Filed on February 23, 2005

Abstract

Under the present invention, a user with an existing profile page who desires to have a social network built will first submit a subscription request. If approved, an existing contact list such as a chat list or the like for the user will be compared to existing contact lists for other subscribing users to establish commonalities. Based on such commonalities, a configurable social network of contacts is built. Using a graphical representation of the social network, the user can (among other things) provide or read testimonials about the contacts therein; access the profile pages for the contacts; provide or read "ratings" for the contacts; be provided with levels/degrees of separation between the contacts; validate trusts and business relationships, etc.

Virus checking and reporting for computer database search results Invented by Cary Lee Bates, Robert James Crenshaw, Paul Reuben Day and John Matthew Santosuosso Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,096,215 Granted August 22, 2006 Filed on January 13, 2004

Abstract

An apparatus, program product and method integrate virus checking functionality into a computer database search environment to assist in protecting a user computer from contracting a computer virus when accessing search results. The generation of a display representation of a result set generated in response to a search request may be based at least in part upon virus status information associated with at least a portion of a plurality of result records identified in the generated result set. Moreover, an apparatus, program product, and method configure a first computer to receive virus status information generated by a plurality of computers, with such received virus status information stored in a virus database that is accessible by the first computer.

America Online

Web query classification Invented by Abdur R. Chowdhury, Steven Michael Beitzel, David Dolan Lewis and Aleksander Kolcz US Patent Application 20060190439 Published August 24, 2006 Filed on January 27, 2006

Abstract

A query phrase may be automatically classified to one or more topics of interest (e.g., categories) to assist in routing the query phrase to one or more appropriate backend databases. A selectional preference query classification technique may be used to classify the query phrase based on a comparison between the query phrase and patterns of query phrases. Additionally, or alternatively, a combination of query classification techniques may be used to classify the query phrase. Topical classification of a query phrase also may be used to assist a search system in delivering auxiliary information to a user who entered the query phrase. Advertisements, for instance, may be tailored based on classification rather than query keywords.

Geovector

Imaging systems including hyperlink associations Invented by Thomas William Ellenby, Peter Malcolm Ellenby and John Ellenby Assigned to GeoVector Corporation US Patent Application 20060190812 Published August 24, 2006 Filed on February 22, 2005

Abstract

Computer pointing systems include schemes for producing image map type hyperlinks which are associated and stored integrally with image data from which they are derived. An object being addressed by a pointing system of is implicitly identified by way of its location and position relative to the pointing system. A geometric definition which corresponds to space substantially occupied by the addressed object is rotated appropriately such that it perspective matches that of the imaging station. When an image is captured, the image data (pixel data) is recorded and associated with image map objects which may include network addresses such as a URL. On reply, these images automatically present network hyperlinks to a user whereby the user can click on an image field and cause a browser application to be directed to a network resource.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 2:33 PM | Permalink

August 28, 2006

Google, Favored Sites, and Editorial Opinion

There's a lot of blog coverage of a new patent from Google, System and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results, which was originally filed with the US Patent Office in December of 2000. I'm seeing a lot of questions related to the patent...

Is a reranking of sites going on in Google search results based upon a favored or non-favored status?
Do search engineers at Google manually decide that some sites are more appropriate for certain queries than others?
Is inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory or the DMOZ a way to become a favored site?
Does this patent describe Google Co-op?
Who are the "editors" that this patent talks about when stating that editors may determine query themes and a favored or non-favored status for a site?
Is Google using the process described in this patent?

Steve Bryant surmises over at Google Watch that the New Google Patent Hints at Direction of Social Search. Rand Fiskin notes that the patent may be an indication that Google is looking at the "quality of pages," and points out that a mention is made of ranking "sites" instead of "pages" in Favored vs. Non-Favored Sources. I tried to break down the language of the patent into some easier to digest pieces at SEO by the Sea, in Google looks at Query Themes and Reranking Based upon Editorial Opinion

A good number of white papers and patent applications published since the filing of this patent have looked at user queries and user behavior in fairly complex ways, such as chaining user queries together in sessions to identify user intent, and exploring how a searcher interacts with search results. It's imaginable that if Google has adopted something like what is described in this patent, that decisions regarding query themes and favored status are based on much more than a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 8:05 PM | Permalink

New Search Patent Filings: August 28, 2006 - Identifying Web Spam and Adult Images

New Microsoft patent applications include one that attempts to identify web spam based upon signals within the content of a page, another looks at ways to search using pattern matching and relevance to answer specific questions, a third describes a method of relating people to each other during a search based upon things such as being co-authors of documents, a fourth defines a process of refining searches based upon previous searches for the same query or by providing additional context to searchers, and a fifth allows users or communities of users to provide reviews of web pages independently of the owners of sites being reviewed.

Yahoo (Overture) was granted a patent on the bidding and ranking of pages through paid search. Yahoo also had published two patent applications which explore social networks, and previewing, inviting and granting authorization for others to view specific pages within that social network.

Ask.com looks at adult images, and a way to identify them as being adult content without performing a visual analysis of those images, but instead by looking a query sessions related to the pictures.

Oracle was granted a patent which mines information about users from query logs and user profiles to retrieve recommendations for pages, expansion of queries based upon that information, and a thematic clustering of those search results.

Microsoft

The following patent application covers some very similar ground as a white paper from Microsoft Research titled Detecting Spam Web Pages through Content Analysis (pdf). It looks at a number of ways that web spam might be identified from the content on a page, though the authors note that the methods involved would likely be used in conjunction with other indications of web spam, perhaps like the ones discussed in Spam, Damn Spam, and Statistics, and in an earlier patent application on Content Evaluation.

Using content analysis to detect spam web pages Invented by Marc Alexander Najork, Dennis Craig Fetterly, Mark Steven Manasse, and Alexandros Ntoulas Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060184500 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on February 11, 2005

Abstract

Evaluating content includes receiving content, analyzing the content for web spam using a content-based identification technique, and classifying the content according to the analysis. An index of analyzed contents may be created. A system for evaluating content includes a storage device configured to store data and a processor configured to analyze content using content-based identification techniques to determine whether web spam is present.

Search methods and associated systems Invented by Larry Israel and John Solaro Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060184523 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on February 15, 2005

Abstract

Search methods and associated systems are disclosed. One aspect of the invention is directed toward search methods and associated systems. One aspect of the invention is directed toward a computer-implemented searching method that includes receiving an input having a format. The method further includes finding a pattern that matches the format of the input using a rule set. The method still further includes determining a subject of the input based on the pattern, finding a result record corresponding to the subject, and sending an output based on the result record. In certain embodiments, the method can further include determining at least one qualifier based on the pattern and finding a result record corresponding to the subject and the at least one qualifier. In still other embodiments, the method can further include determining a subject of the input based on the pattern and at least one synonym rule.

Method and system for mining information based on relationships Invented by Benyu Zhang, Wei-Ying Ma, Gu Xu, Hongbin Gao, Zheng Chen, Randy Hinrichs, Hua-Jun Zeng Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060184481 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on February 11, 2005

Abstract

A method and system for identifying information about people is provided. The information system identifies groups of people that have relationships based on their relationships to documents or more generally to objects. The information system initially is provided with an indication of which people have which relationships to which documents. The information system then identifies clusters of people based on having a relationship to the same objects. The information system may also identify clusters of related objects associated with a cluster of people. When a user wants to identify information about a person, the user can provide the name of that person to the information system. The information system then can retrieve and display the names of the other people who are in the same cluster as the person.

Content searching and configuration of search results Invented by Greg A. Kohanim, Jonathan L. Wiedemann, Christine A. Jefson, and David Aaron Ward Snelling Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060184512 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on February 17, 2005

Abstract

Content searching and configuration of search results are described. In an implementation, a method includes in response to a search query, selecting a keyword based on heuristic data which describes a plurality of previously performed searched. A search is performed utilizing the search query and the selected keyword to locate content.

Method and system for contextual site rating Invented by Peter G. Williams, Mark A. Wilson-Thomas, Martin Peck, Robert J. Wilcox, Andrew Burns, Martin Grayson Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060184608 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on February 11, 2005

Abstract

The present invention allows a user or community of users to rate content across a variety of web sites and display contextual sensitive reviews. Rather than the rating information being controlled by the web site owner, the rating information may be owned and controlled by a third party. Users have the ability to rate a web site, review ratings from a web site, or operate a web site rating system.

Yahoo

System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine Invented by Darren J. Davis, Matthew Derer, Johann Garcia, Larry Greco, Tod E. Kurt, Thomas Kwong, Jonathan C. Lee, Ka Luk Lee, Preston Pfarner, and Steve Skovran Assigned to Overture United States Patent 7,092,901 Granted August 15, 2006 Filed on July 24, 2001

Abstract

A system and method for enabling information providers using a computer network such as the Internet to influence a position for a search listing within a search result list generated by an Internet search engine. The system and method of the present invention provides a database having accounts for the network information providers. Each account contains contact and billing information for a network information provider. In addition, each account contains at least one search listing having at least three components: a description, a search term comprising one or more keywords, and a bid amount. The network information provider may add, delete, or modify a search listing after logging into his or her account via an authentication process. The network information provider influences a position for a search listing in the provider's account by first selecting a search term relevant to the content of the web site or other information source to be listed. The network information provider enters the search term and the description into a search listing. The network information provider influences the position for a search listing through a continuous online competitive bidding process. The bidding process occurs when the network information provider enters a new bid amount, which is preferably a money amount, for a search listing. The system and method of the present invention then compares this bid amount with all other bid amounts for the same search term, and generates a rank value for all search listings having that search term. The rank value generated by the bidding process determines where the network information providers listing will appear on the search results list page that is generated in response to a query of the search term by a searcher located at a client computer on the computer network. A higher bid by a network information provider will result in a higher rank value and a more advantageous placement.

Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected content based on another user's authorization level Invented by Michael La Rotonda, Neal Sample, Paul Brody, Ellen Sue Perelman, Ericson DeJesus Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060184578 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on December 20, 2005

Abstract

Enabling a first user to preview content as it would be seen by a second user, if the second user had a selected user relationship with the first user. The selected user relationship may comprise a relationship degree, a relationship category, a relationship rating, and/or other form of relationship. In one embodiment, a user interface enables the first user to assign user relationships to portions of content and to other users. The first user selects a user relationship, which is used to access those portions of content that are associated with the first user and assigned the selected user relationship. The corresponding portions of content are used to generate a preview display for the first user, illustrating the portions of content that would be accessible to other users assigned the same user relationship or assigned a closer user relationship. Preview may be generated by a server or a local client.

Control for inviting an unauthenticated user to gain access to display of content that is otherwise accessible with an authentication mechanism Invented by Michael La Rotonda, Neal Sample; ; (Santa Cruz, CA) ; F. Randall Farmer, Paul Brody, and Ellen Sue Perelman Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060184997 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on December 20, 2005

Abstract

Enabling an unauthenticated user to access content associated with an authenticated user as though the unauthenticated user had a selected user relationship with the authenticated user. The user relationship may comprise a relationship degree, a relationship category, a relationship rating, and/or the like. An invitation to join an electronic service, such as an online social network, is sent to the unauthenticated user at an address known to the authenticated user. The invitation includes a time-limited token, such as a URL, that includes an invitation identifier, which relates the invitation to the authenticated user content. The token may be encrypted in the invitation. The unauthenticated user returns the token as a request to preview the authenticated user content without first becoming an authenticated user of the electronic service. If the token is still valid, access is granted. The unauthenticated user may also request to establish a connection with the authenticated user.

Ask.com

Methods and apparatuses to determine adult images by query association Invented by Kaushal Kurapati and Rahul Lahiri US Patent Application 20060184577 Published August 17, 2006 Filed on May 18, 2005

Abstract

Various methods and apparatuses are described for an adult content detection implementation. In one embodiment, a method detects adult content images by tracked query association to a user's query for an image search. The set of images returned in response to the user's query on a search engine are based on whether one or more images in the set are classified as an adult content image.

Oracle

System and method for search and recommendation based on usage mining Invented by Omar Alonso and Atul Kumar Assigned to Oracle United States Patent 7,092,936 Granted August 15, 2006 Filed on August 22, 2001

Abstract

A method, system, and computer program product for performing searching that generates improved queries, retrieves meaningful and relevant information, and presents the retrieved information to the user in a useful and comprehensive manner is described. The method of searching comprises the steps of: receiving from a user a search query requesting information, retrieving at least one recommendation relating to the search query, generating an expanded query based on the received query, performing a search using the expanded query to retrieve documents, and generating themes relating to the retrieved documents. The at least one recommendation relating to the search query is retrieved from a recommendation database. The recommendation database is generated by performing the steps of: performing data mining using users search query logs, user search patterns, and user profile information to generate a plurality of recommendations relating to search query strings, generating a data structure including the recommendations relating to search query strings, and generating a text index based on information in the data structure.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 6:29 PM | Permalink

Google Sued Over Personalized Search Patent

Yonhap News reports that Park & Opc Co., a South Korean ISP, is suing Google over a patent dispute. Park & Opc Co. claims they have a patent on personalized search that Google has violated.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:30 AM | Permalink

August 27, 2006

New Search Patent Filings: August 27, 2006 - Google's Recommendations, IBM's Speedier Pagerank, Napster's Search

Google looks at search history and user behavior to rerank results and offer ecommerce recommendations, provides a way to rewrite navigation on web pages for users of a proxy system to access the web, and shows some of the inner workings of Desktop Search.

IBM was granted a patent based upon providing advertisements to people based upon sites that they have visited, another that allows people to download information from specified pages which can be indexed and searched locally, a way of speeding up pagerank, and a method for organizing bookmarks.

Microsoft published a couple of patent applications, one which looks at using game playing to provide user rankings for web pages, and a method of providing contextual advertisements for non-textual content.

Napster's peer-to-peer filing sharing system is described in a patent originally filed in August, 2000.

Google

This patent from Google describes a way to use past search history and user behavior to rerank search results and provide ecommerce based recommendations.

Interface and system for providing persistent contextual relevance for commerce activities in a networked environment Invented by Donald R. Turnbull and Hinrich Schuetze Assigned to Google United States Patent 7,089,237 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on January 26, 2001

Abstract

A search and recommendation system employs the preferences and profiles of individual users and groups within a community of users, as well as information derived from categorically organized content pointers, to augment electronic commerce related searches, re-rank search results, and provide recommendations for commerce related objects based on an initial subject-matter query and an interaction history of a user. The search and recommendation system operates in the context of a content pointer manager, which stores individual users' content pointers (some of which may be published or shared for group use) on a centralized content pointer database connected to a network. The shared content pointer manager is implemented as a distributed program, portions of which operate on users' terminals and other portions of which operate on the centralized content pointer database. A user's content pointers are organized in accordance with a local topical categorical hierarchy. The hierarchical organization is used to define a relevance context within which returned objects are evaluated and ordered.

Rewriting parts of pages through a proxy server, for use with mobile devices, is the focus of this patent granted to Google. It shows a method of understanding what parts of a page is navigation, in addition to determining which navigation may be ideally rewritten for a handheld.

Identifying navigation bars and objectionable navigation bars Invented by Chade-Meng Tan and Daniel Dulitz Assigned to Google United States Patent 7,089,490 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on November 30, 2000

Abstract

Detecting so-called "navigation bars" (or "nav bars") in a (Web) document by determining whether or not nodes of a parse tree of the (Web) document are "anchor-heavy". Generally, a navigation bar can be thought of as text, such as a hyper-text link or anchor text for example, without any immediate content. Once a navigation bar is detected, objectionable navigation bars (i.e., navigation bars, the rendering of which would be objectionable to users without special re-authoring), can be distinguished from non-objectionable navigation bars (i.e., navigation bars which would not be objectionable to users with no special re-authoring). Objectionable navigation bars may be distinguished from non-objectionable navigation bars by: (a) determining whether the navigation bar is so small that normal rendering would not be objectionable; (b) determining whether the navigation bar presumably conveys meaningful content; and/or (c) determining whether the navigation bar is a component of a non-objectionable navigation bar (where all components of the non-objectionable navigation bar are navigation bars themselves).

One of the inventors listed in the following patent application, Tomas Gunnarsson, is a Google Desktop Software Engineer according to a post he made in the Google Blog on a "quick search" for Desktop Search. It appears that this patent filing looks at some of the inner workings of Desktop Search.

Access to a target object with desired functionality Invented by Johann Tomas Sigurdsson and Tomas Gunnarsson Assigned to Google US Patent Application 20060179441 Published August 10, 2006 Filed on February 10, 2005

Abstract

A system and method provide access to a target object associated with a desired functionality. This is accomplished by creating an instance of a pre-existing object, replacing one or more functions of a table shared by all objects of the object's class, and triggering a call that ultimately causes the replacement functions to be called to allow access to the target object. The system includes software portions for enabling the method.

IBM

As a person surfs the web, the process in this patent describes a way of collecting keywords from pages visited to target appropriate advertising for that user.

Method and apparatus for providing reduced cost online service and adaptive targeting of advertisements Invented by Viktors Berstis and Herman Rodriguez Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,194 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on June 17, 1999

Abstract

A method and apparatus for adaptively targeting advertisements to a specific client computer from a server within a distributed data processing system is provided. As a user of the client browses the World Wide Web, the material that is downloaded to the client constitutes a datastream. At some location during the routing of the datastream, either on the server or at the client, the datastream is scanned to generate a list of keywords that are present within the datastream. The datastream may be analyzed in real-time or cached and analyzed on a delayed basis. The generated list of keywords represents a summary of the content that appears to be the focus of interest of the user. The keywords are compared against a database of advertisements, and the server selects an advertisement that matches the user's area of interest in comparison to the analysis of the user's browsing history. The selected advertisement is then inserted into the datastream to be routed to the client. In consideration for viewing targeted advertisements and to entice a Web viewer to allow the monitoring of a datastream so that targeted advertisements may be placed into the datastream, a Web viewer may receive online connection service for free, for a reduced cost, at a premium level of service, or for other some other value, such as frequent viewer credits that may be exchanged for goods and services.

Method and system for searching for web content Invented by Michael James Osias Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,233 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on September 6, 2001

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for searching for web content. Specifically, the present invention provides a system and method for retrieving web content from designated web pages and hyperlinks, indexing the retrieved web content in a local database, and searching the local database for desired web content. Retrieved content is indexed in the local database so that future access of the web content can be more efficient.

System and method for rapid computation of PageRank Invented by John Anthony Tomlin, Andrew S. Tomkins, and Arvind Arasu Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,252 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on April 25, 2002

Abstract

A method of ranking a plurality of linked documents. The method comprises obtaining a plurality of documents, and determining a rank of each document. The rank of each document is generally a function of a rank of all other documents in the plurality of documents which point to the document and is determined by solving, by equation-solving methods (including Gauss-Seidel iteration and partitioning) of a set of equations wherein:.alpha..alpha..times..times..times..times. ##EQU00001## where x.sub.i is the rank of the page indexed by i, .alpha. is a number strictly between 0 and 1.0, the summation is over all indices j such that page j points to page i, and a.sub.ij is defined to be the reciprocal of the number of links pointing out from page j (denoted d.sub.j) if page j points to page i, and zero otherwise.

Conditional promotion of bookmarks Invented by Cary L. Bates, Gilford F. Martino, John M. Santosuosso, and Vincent T. Timon, III Assigned to IBM United States Patent 7,089,305 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on September 25, 2001

Abstract

A method and system for organizing bookmarks. A bookmark structure includes a main bookmark list and at least one bookmark folder. A bookmark search list, which includes at least one bookmark in the bookmark structure, is generated. Software is executed, wherein the software searches each bookmark on the bookmark search list through depth N (N.gtoreq.0). The searching determines whether the bookmark satisfies an upgrade condition. The upgrade condition includes a boolean text expression and may also include at least one of: a client visitation condition, a general visitation condition, a bookmark existence condition, a content-type condition, a URL-age condition, and a Top-Level-Domain (TLD) condition. If the searching determines that the bookmark satisfies the upgrade condition and that the bookmark is not in the special bookmark location, then the bookmark is moved to the special bookmark location.

Microsoft

Improving quality of web search results using a game Invented by Luis von Ahn Arellano and Josh D. Benaloh Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060179053 Published August 10, 2006 Filed on February 4, 2005

Abstract

A system combines individual estimates of the subjective appeal of web pages into a combined rating for each web page that can be used to rank web pages during a web search. In a gaming implementation, a web page recipient estimates the combined rating that other recipients of the web page have formulated. The recipient can be rewarded for accurately estimating the combined rating by receiving a subsequent web page that possesses a high rating.

Image and other analysis for contextual ads Invented by Carl M. Kadie, Joshua T. Goodman, and Christopher A. Meek Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060179453 Published August 10, 2006 Filed on February 7, 2005

Abstract

The subject invention provides a unique system and method that facilitates providing contextual advertisements based on one or more identified terms extracted from a non-text object such as an image, video, and/or audio object. Terms can also be identified and extracted from metadata associated with or other data derived from text objects such as email messages and attached text documents. One or more recognition techniques can be employed to identify data found in the non-text object (including the metadata or any other data derived therefrom) and data found in the metadata associated with the text object. Once the identified terms are analyzed, an appropriate contextual advertisement can be presented to the user. If the content of the non-text or text object is deemed of a negative nature, no contextual advertisement is provided.

Outland Research

Napster

System and method for searching peer-to-peer computer networks by selecting a computer based on at least a number of files shared by the computer Invented by Wilburt Juan Labio, Giao Thanh Nguyen, Winston Wencheng Liu, Gurmeet Singh Manku Assigned to Napster United States Patent 7,089,301 Granted August 8, 2006 Filed on August 11, 2000

Abstract

A method and system for intelligently directing a search of a peer-to-peer network, in which a user performing a search is assisted in choosing a host which is likely to return fast, favorable results to the user. A host monitor monitors the peer-to-peer network and collects data on various characteristics of the hosts which make up the network. Thereafter, a host selector ranks the hosts using the data, and passes this information to the user. The user then selects one or more of the highly-ranked hosts as an entry point into the network. Additionally, a cache may collect a list of hosts based on the content on the hosts. In this way, a user may choose to connect to a host which is known to contain information relevant to the user's search. The host selector may be used to select from among the hosts listed in the cache.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 11:34 PM | Permalink

August 8, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: August 8, 2006 - Focusing on the Searcher

This last week's patent applications involving search all seem to focus upon users of search engines, and finding ways to fulfill intentions behind searches.

There are a couple from Stanford professor Louis Rosenberg and his company Outland Research, that focus upon a searcher's personal interests and attributes, and two from America Online involving dictionary searches and meta searches. Microsoft also has a pair of patent filings on interesting ways to refine search results after a search has been conducted. And, IBM comes up with a related duo on measuring how documents served as search results are used, including an incentive feature for users to provide information about those documents.

Outland Research

The first of Outland Research's patent applications reranks search results based upon the age or the gender, or both, of a searcher. The second reranks results based upon the personal background of the searcher.

Methods and apparatus for using user gender and/or age group to improve the organization of documents retrieved in response to a search query Invented by Louis B. Rosenberg Assigned to Outland Research,. LLC US Patent Application 20060173556 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: January 27, 2006

Abstract

A computer implemented method of organizing a set of documents, and associated apparatus, are adapted to receive a search query from a user; obtain identified-age and/or -gender data for the user; identify a set of documents responsive to the search query; assign a score to each identified document based upon a correlation between age- and/or gender-usage data for each document and identified-age and/or -gender data, respectively; and organize the documents based at least in part on the assigned score. The identified-age data describes an age of the user and the identified-gender data describes a gender of the user. The age-usage data describes a number and/or frequency of users who previously accessed the document who are of a particular age or age range. The gender-usage data describes a number and/or frequency of users who previously accessed the document who are of a particular gender.

Methods and apparatus for using personal background data to improve the organization of documents retrieved in response to a search query Invented by Louis B. Rosenberg Assigned to Outland Research, LLC US Patent Application 20060173828 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: December 9, 2005

Abstract

A computerized method of organizing a set of documents includes receiving a search query from a user; obtaining personal background data from the user; identifying at least one personal background trait within the personal background data, the personal background trait being statistically correlated with documents that the user is likely to prefer; identifying a plurality of documents responsive to the search query; assigning a score to each identified document based upon a correlation between advanced usage information for each document and the identified personal background trait, the advanced usage information describing at least one of a number and frequency of users who have previously accessed the document who possess the identified personal background trait; and organizing the documents based at least in part on the assigned score.

America Online

America Online provides a process that can take membership in a community as a factor when returning results in a dictionary lookup, and a process involving meta search which may involve modifying queries to match a user's intentions, and scoring and sorting results to be served.

Retrieving and providing contextual information Invented by Carl Bruecken Assigned to America Online US Patent Application 20060173806 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: October 31, 2005

Abstract

An electronic dictionary may be created by receiving a data request action for a word appearing in an electronic document, accessing information regarding the context of the word derived from within the electronic document in which the word appears, storing the definition of the word along with the context information for the word, and enabling access by the user to the definition and the context information. Search fusion

Invented by Abdur R.Chowdhury and Gregory S. Pass US Patent Application 20060173817 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: December 29, 2004

Abstract

Search results are assigned scores based on visual aspects of surrogate representations of the search results which are to be displayed to a query submitter in a search results summary overview. That is, the surrogate representations are relatively short summaries or excerpts of the search results that may be presented in place of the search results themselves, thus enabling an overview of various search results to be perceived by a user concurrently. The search results are assigned scores based on the presence, position, and form of some or all of the query within the corresponding surrogate representations. The search results may be sorted or filtered based on the assigned scores. Assigning scores to the search results based on visual characteristics of the surrogate representations mimics how a user may assess the relevance of the search results when viewing a search results summary page.

Microsoft

Microsoft's patent applications allow a user to further refine results based upon user feedback. The first enables the selection of attributes associated with results, such as positive and negative opinions associated with the subject of the search. The second process involves the creation of a user survey to enable a searcher to comment upon search results to help train the search engine, and also refine that particular search.

System and method for grouping by attribute Invented by Eric B. Watson Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060173819 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: January 28, 2005

Abstract

A system and method are provided for implementing a search engine to produce search results grouped by attribute. The system may include an attribute indexing component for indexing available resources with reference to selected attributes in a search engine index. The system may additionally include a grouping component for grouping search results produced by the search engine into at least two attribute groups in accordance with the indexed selected attributes. The system may further include an attribute display component for displaying information pertaining to the selected attributes within each relevant available resource.

System and method for generating contextual survey sequence for search results

Invented by Eddie L. Mays and Oliver Hurst-Hiller Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060173820 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: January 28, 2005

Abstract

A system and related techniques generate a survey to capture a user's feedback about the quality of search results, in a continuous context with the user's Web page or other search activity. A survey frame inviting the user to undertake a set of search questions may be presented within a set of page frames which display search results. The survey frame enables the user to be prompted into a dialogue to supply feedback about their search experience, while still within the contextual workflow of that experience, and still being able to view or review results or content which they have received. User distraction is therefore minimized while feedback quality may be improved. The user's feedback, which rates the quality or accuracy of the search results or search experience may be stored and used to train search intelligence.

IBM

IBM's documents also take hints from user behavior to define search results. The first looks at how documents returned during a search are utilized by a searcher, such as whether they are viewed or printed out or bookmarked, by the searcher. The second builds upon that one by defining a process where rewards or credits may be awarded to a user for providiing document use information.

Systems, methods, and media for utilizing electronic document usage information with search engines Invented by Viktors Berstis and Randolph Michael Forlenza Correspondence Name and Address: IBM US Patent Application 20060173818 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: January 11, 2005

Abstract

Systems, methods and media for utilizing electronic document usage information are disclosed. More particularly, hardware and/or software utilizing electronic document usage information to respond to user search requests with search engines are disclosed. Embodiments include receiving a search request from a requesting user and receiving document utilization information associated with one or more electronic documents, where the document utilization information provides an indication of the usage of the electronic documents by one or more users. Further embodiments include generating search results based at least partially on the search request and the document utilization information and transmitting an indication of the search results to the requesting user. Further embodiments include generating statistical information regarding the search results for electronic documents and transmitting the generated statistical information.

Systems, methods, and media for awarding credits based on provided usage information Invented by Viktors Berstis and Randolph Michael Forlenza Correspondence Name and Address: IBM US Patent Application 20060173837 Published August 3, 2006 Filed: January 11, 2005

Abstract

Systems, methods and media for awarding credits based on provided usage information are disclosed. More particularly, hardware and/or software for collecting and disseminating usage information related to electronic documents and for awarding usage credits to users in exchange for providing usage information are disclosed. Embodiments include receiving an indication of the usage of an electronic document by a user and aggregating the received usage indication for the document with usage indications relating to other users. Embodiments may also include creating document utilization information for the electronic document based on the aggregated usage indications and awarding usage credit to the user based on the user's providing statistics on the usage of the electronic document. Further embodiments may include transmitting an indication of the awarded usage credit to the user and receiving a request to use the usage credits.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our a href="http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forumdisplay.php?f=21">Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 6:52 AM | Permalink

August 1, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: August 1, 2006 - Microsoft Answers?

There are a number of new patent applications from Yahoo, including one that utilizes concept networks to understand the intention behind a user's query; another describing an addition to a user interface that lets a searcher define the context of a search; an API approach to retrieve information from fast changing dynamic sites such as job listing sites, news site personals, or online auction sites; a way to use the contents of a first set of results from the search engine to find relevant pages from a second set of results, including both paid and organic results; a process of dynamically modifying the layout of a page so that the most important content is likely to be seen by a visitor; and a remote filtering system for filtering spam for client-based email programs.

Microsoft unveils a patent application that could be the inspiration for Windows Live QnA, a process for removing unlinked documents from a search engine's index, an approach for presenting relevant snippets with search results, a means of using cached search results for queries with relevant advertising results, and a query refinement process based upon past user behavior.

IBM provides a linguistic approach to identifying the main body text of a page, and they present that approach as an improvement upon methods such as a VIPS or a Visual Gap Segmentation process.

Yahoo

Systems and methods for managing and using multiple concept networks for assisted search processing Inventors: Shyam Kapur, Jignashu Parikh, and Deepa Joshi Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060167896 Published July 27, 2006 Filed on December 5, 2005

Abstract

Multiple concept networks are generated from subsets of received queries. These concept networks can be used in various ways to enhance response to subsequent queries. In one embodiment, concept networks can be merged into a larger concept network that can be used to infer a user's likely intent given a query. In another embodiment, suggestions for related searches obtained using different concept networks can be merged or aggregated. Other users for concept networks in query processing, including assisted search, are also described.

Systems and methods for contextual transaction proposals Inventors: Reiner Kraft, Andreas Hartmann, Farzin Maghoul Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060167857 Published July 27, 2006 Filed on May 12, 2005

Abstract

Context-specific transaction proposals are automatically generated and presented to a user who expresses interest in a particular topic. A user viewing a World Wide Web page or other content item activates an interface to indicate that he or she is interested in additional information related to the subject of the page. A context vector or other representation of the content of the page being viewed is transmitted to an information server, which identifies possible transactions related to the content and proposes one or more of these transactions to the user. Transaction proposals can be presented together with a contextual search interface that allows the user to submit zero or more search terms together with the context vector as a search query.

System and method for improving online search engine results

Inventors: Daniel Patrick Dissett, Arkady Borkovsky, Charles Converse Carson, JR. Assigned to Yahoo! Inc. US Patent Application 20060167852 Published July 27, 2006 Filed on January 28, 2005

July 11, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: July 11, 2006 - Google Patent Filings by the Dozen

Twelve Google patent applications where published this past week, including seven that focus upon geographical information and local search.

(1) How good a match ads may be to the content on pages they are served upon through a program like Adsense. (2) A process for improving the targeting of ads. (3) Real time transportation data for travelers. (4) An exploration of ad layouts. (5) An automated advertising approval process. (6) Reasons for location-based businesses to use local area advertising, including an improved pay-per-call process.

(7) How the most authoritative local search results are identified. (8) The use of visual gap segmentation to separate information on different parts of pages, with implications beyond local search. (9) Ties business locations with regional areas. (10) A method for reducing ambiguity in geographic location. (11) Deciding whether regular or local results might be shown when at least one query term might be geographical in nature. (12) Assigning confidence scores between business identity and location information on a page.

Microsoft adds two more, on the validity of links, and on the validity of anchor text in links. They have very similar names, and cover topics that are related, but the processes involved are very different.

Google

This first patent filing discusses some of the factors that the search engine may look at to determine whether or not an ad served on a page a good match for that page and possibly the category that page may be within, including some user behavior information such as whether or not ads are selected, how long a viewer remains on a page, and if a conversion is made.

Associating features with entities, such as categories of web page documents, and/or weighting such features Inventors: Ross Koningstein, Stephen Lawrence, and Valentin Spitkovsky US Patent Application 20060149710 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

Features that may be used to represent relevance information (e.g., properties, characteristics, etc.) of an entity, such as a document or concept for example, may be associated with the document by accepting an identifier that identifies a document; obtaining search query information (and/or other serving parameter information) related to the document using the document identifier, determining features using the obtained query information (and/or other serving parameter information), and associating the features determined with the document. Weights of such features may be similarly determined. The weights may be determined using scores. The scores may be a function of one or more of whether the document was selected, a user dwell time on a selected document, whether or not a conversion occurred with respect to the document, etc. The document may be a Web page. The features may be n-grams. The relevance information of the document may be used to target the serving of advertisements with the document.

The process detailed in the next patent application aims at improving the relevancy of ads, and helping in suggesting targeted terms by allowing an advertiser to submit broad targeting information. While serving ads using that information, the search engine would log and collect search query terms, and possibly concepts and concept keywords, associated with the serving of the ad, and suggest candidate targeting keywords or phrases to the advertiser from those logs.

Suggesting and/or providing targeting information for advertisements Inventors: Ross Koningstein US Patent Application 20060149625 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

The relevancy of ads may be increased, and opportunities to serve an ad that might otherwise be missed may be exploited by (i) accepting broad targeting information, to be used for serving an ad, from an advertiser, (ii) serving the ad using the broad targeting information, (iii) logging search query terms (or some other information, such as concepts, concept keywords, etc.) associated with the serving of the ad, and (iv) generating one or more candidate targeting keywords or phrases for the ad using the logged search query terms. At least one of the candidate targeting keywords or phrases may be provided as targeting information for the ad. Alternatively, at least one of the candidate targeting keywords or phrases may be presented to the advertiser. Advertiser input with respect to the candidate targeting keyword(s) or phrase(s) presented may then be accepted. Zero or more of the candidate targeting keyword(s) or phrase(s) may be provided as targeting information for the ad, in accordance with the accepted advertiser input. Cost information (e.g., average cost per selection, average cost per conversion, total costs, etc.) may be presented in association with the candidate targeting information.

Traffic assistance similar to that provided by Google acquisition Zipdash is the focus of the next document, and Zipdash is named as a service that would use this process. Some integration of local search and advertising is hinted at in the filing.

Transportation routing Inventors: Henry Rowley, and Shumeet Baluja US Patent Application 20060149461 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 31, 2004

Abstract

A computer-implemented method of providing personalized route information involves gathering a plurality of past location indicators over time for a wireless client device, determining a future driving objective using the plurality of previously-gathered location indicators, obtaining real-time traffic data for an area proximate to the determined driving objective, and generating a suggested route for the driving objective using the near real-time traffic data.

How are the layouts of ads best optimized? What size fonts are used, and how many ads are displayed on pages? Google explores some of those concepts, and notes that the presentation ideas for ads in the following document also may be used to present news items on search results pages.

Ad rendering parameters, such as size, style, and/or layout, of online ads Inventors: Shumeet Baluja, Vibhu Mittal, and Mehran Sahami US Patent Application 20060149622 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

Ad rendering parameters for a set of two or more ads may be determined by (a) accepting, for a set of two or more ads, ad information which includes at least one ad feature having a value that depends on ad rendering parameters, and (b) determining ad rendering parameters for at least one ad from the set of two or more ads using the accepted ad information. The act of determining ad rendering parameters may use accepted ad rendering constraints. The ad rendering constraints may include space available for rendering the ads, a footprint available for rendering the ads, and/or a maximum number of ads permitted to be rendered. The act of determining ad rendering parameters may include maximizing a value associated with serving at least one ad from the set of two or more ads with ad rendering parameters subject to the ad rendering constraints. The ad rendering parameters may include sizes of the served ads, and/or a layout of the served ads.

Automating the approval process for paid ads could benefit Google and advertisers. What would such an approval process entail? The next document identifies a number of issues involved in approving an ad, and in followups on advertisements. It also describes a whitelist for exceptions to some of the policies that may keep ads from being approved.

Advertisement approval Inventors: Gregory Joseph Badros, Robert J. Stets, and Lucy Zhang US Patent Application 20060149623 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

An advertisement for use with an online ad serving system may be automatically checked for compliance with one or more policies of the online ad serving system. If the advertisement is approved, then it is allowed by be served by the ad serving system. Follow up checks of the advertisement may be scheduled. One follow up check may be to test a landing page of the advertisement for compliance with policies. If the advertisement is not approved, hints for making the ad comply with one or more violated policies may be provided to an advertiser associated with the ad, and/or an ad serving system customer service representative. Determining whether or not to approve the advertisement may include determining violations of one or more policies by the advertisement, and, for each of the violations, determining whether or not to exempt the violation.

Google Local Patent Applications

The following patent applications primarily look at local search, though some of the processes described within them may have broader reaching implications, such as the one on visual segmentation of information on pages.

Businesses associated with a specific location often don't use paid search as part of their advertising strategy. This first patent application thoughtfully goes into some of the reasons why, and explores ways to make it a more attractive medium, including expanded pay-per-call functionality, as well as providing information such as business hours and types of payment accepted.

Generating and/or serving local area advertisements, such as advertisements for devices with call functionality Inventors: Shumeet Baluja and Henry A. Rowley US Patent Application 20060149624 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

Sets of local, (e.g., online) ads may be generated by obtaining sets of information about (e.g., local) establishments, each set including a business address information and/or a telephone number, (b) determining, for each of the sets, a location using at least one of at least a portion of the business address information and at least a portion of the telephone number, and (c) generating, for each of the sets, an ad that includes targeting information that targets the serving of the ad to queries related to the determined location. A query, including information about a location of a client device, may be accepted and at least one of the generated ads that includes targeting information that targets the location of the client device may be determined.

How does a local search determine which document is the most relevant and authoritative one to return at the top of a local search list? A number of factors are considered in this next set of described processes.

Authoritative document identification Inventors: Daniel Egnor and Geeta Chaudhry US Patent Application 20060149800 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

A system determines documents that are associated with a location, identifies a group of signals associated with each of the documents, and determines authoritativeness of the documents for the location based on the signals.

If you are familiar with Microsoft's research on VIPS: a VIsion based Page Segmentation Algorithm, some of the ideas in the next document may sound a little familiar. Imagine a page that includes restaurant reviews for a number of restaurants in a city neighborhood. Might the information from that page be segmented, so that reviews for each of the restaurants can be included in results for the right restaurants in a local search? This visual gap approach might be helpful in that endeavor.

The document also notes that this process might be helpful in determining what an image is about, and in indexing them. It also mentions that it could help the search engine understand what the different parts of a page are, and how much value they have (for instance, distinqusihing between content and navigation.)

Document segmentation based on visual gaps Inventors: Daniel Egnor US Patent Application 20060149775 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

A document may be segmented based on a visual model of the document. The visual model is determined according to an amount of visual white space or gaps that are in the document. In one implementation, the visual model is used to identify a hierarchical structure of the document, which may then be used to segment the document.

While a search engine may be able to determine where a business related to a page is located, it may want to associate that location with a geographical region. Something like a Hierarchical Triangular Mesh may be used to help in making that association.

Indexing documents according to geographical relevance Inventors: Daniel Egnor US Patent Application 20060149774 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

A local search engine efficiently indexes documents relevant to a geographical area by indexing, for each document, multiple location identifiers that collectively define an aggregate geographic region. When creating the index, the search engine may determine a set of geographical areas surrounding a geographical area relevant to a document and associate references to the set of geographical areas with the document index.

It's not always clear what the geographic location of a webpage is, based upon information presented on individual pages, though sometimes that type of information exists on the pages. The process displayed in this next filing tries to take information that may be spread out on a page, and tie it together to identify a location.

Classification of ambiguous geographic references Inventors: Daniel Egnor US Patent Application 20060149742 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

A location classifier generates location information based on textual strings in input text. The location information defines potential geographical relevance of the input text. In determining the location information, the location classifier may receive at least one geo-relevance profile associated with at least one string in the input text, obtain a combined geo-relevance profile for the document from the at least one geo-relevance profile, and determine geographical relevance of the input text based on the combined geo-relevance profile.

Imagine if a search engine could serve either regular web search results or local results. Some search queries could be ambiguous, and may make it difficult to determine whether to serve local search information or general web search results. The inventors of the next document provide some ideas that may reduce some of that ambiguity a little.

Location extraction Inventors: Daniel Egnor and Lawrence Elias Greenfield US Patent Application 20060149734 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

A system receives a search query that includes a set of search terms, determines whether at least one of the search terms corresponds to the name of a geographic area, and determines whether the geographic area corresponds to an unambiguous geographic area when at least one of the search terms corresponds to the name of the geographic area. The system performs a local search, based on one or more of the search terms, to identify documents associated with the geographic area when the geographic area corresponds to an unambiguous geographic area.

The title of this patent application, and the previous one are so similar, that I was concerned they might be duplicates when I uncovered them. The one above attempts to "extract" location information from a query. This next one attempts to "extract" location information from pages being indexed, with confidence scores indicating how likely it is that business information on a page is associated with an address on the same page.

Local item extraction Inventors: Michael Dennis Riley US Patent Application 20060149565 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

A system identifies a document that includes an address and locates business information in the document. The system assigns a confidence score to the business information, where the confidence score relates to a probability that the business information is associated with the address. The system determines whether to associate the business information with the address based on the assigned confidence score.

Microsoft

The titles of two Microsoft patent applications are very similar, but the processes described aren't. The first one looks at anchor text in links, and the titles to pages those links point to, to see if the anchor text is accurate. The second one looks at links on pages, using the Document Object Model, and tries to determine if they are valid links while simulating the experience of a user of the page viewing it with a browser. This may help a search engine understand dynamic html menus, and view links that may otherwise be unavailable to a search engine crawler.

Methods and apparatus for the evaluation of aspects of a web page Inventors: Michael A. Starbird Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060150076 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

Methods and apparatus are provided for evaluating the extent to which link text, representing a hypertext link on a web page, corresponds to a web page referenced by the link. In one embodiment, the link text may be compared to the title of a web page referenced by the link, such as by parsing the link text and page title into individual tokens and comparing the tokens. The extent to which the link text and the page title correspond may be expressed as a percentage of tokens which match. A graphical user interface (GUI) may be provided which presents a visual indication when a minimum percentage of tokens do not match.

Methods and apparatus for evaluating aspects of a web page Inventors: Ryan Farber Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060150111 Published July 6, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2004

Abstract

An automated method is provided for evaluating the validity of links included in a web page. The web page may contain commands, such as dynamic HTML or other embedded commands, which are configured for execution upon the occurrence of an event, such as a provision of input by a user. According to one embodiment, the method includes causing the links to be generated by simulating the occurrence of the event. Upon the generation of the links, their validity may be determined, and a report may be produced which indicates whether the links are valid.

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Posted by Bill Slawski at 8:55 PM | Permalink

July 5, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: July 5, 2006 - Google Coming to a Shopping Mall Near You

Google files patents for shopping offline with online assistance, a secondary map in Google Maps, and an updated review aggregator. Yahoo adds a patent application for search results PPC advertising, and managing blog content. Microsoft looks to anchor text to help train a machine learning classification system when user behavior data isn't available. AOL details a method of filtering search results using ontologies and expert domains for queries. IBM explains differences in how images can be indexed, and presents a method based upon the semantic meanings of pictures. Become, Inc., describes how different links can be assigned different values while using a link-based ranking system.

Google

The title to this first patent filing is a little misleading, in that it encompasses a much broader range of activities than just serving coupons or advertising. It's the first patent filing I've seen that includes island resorts, shopping malls, and chinese restaurants as part of the "Exemplary System Architecture." It's a shopping system that provides information about offline shopping, including real time data, such as waiting times in lines, menu specials, products and services available by price range and in stock availability, walking directions combined with shopping lists, and much more. Imagine shopping kiosks at your local shopping mall that can be used as part of this system, you have part of the broader picture in place.

Generating and/or serving dynamic promotional offers such as coupons and advertisements Invented by Ashutosh Garg and Allen Romero US Patent Application 20060143080 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on December 29, 2004

Abstract

A promotional offer may be generated by (i) accepting information concerning at least one of (A) a search query entered, at a client device, by a user, (B) an item or establishment which is the subject of a search result selected by a user using a client device, (C) one or more items or establishments which are elements of a shopping session summary provided to a user via a client device, (ii) determining a promotional offer to serve using at least the accepted search query information, and (iii) determining terms of the promotional offer using at least one of (A) a location of the client device, (B) a distance from the client device to an establishment associated with the promotional offer, and (C) a distance from the client device to an establishment competing with the establishment associated with the promotional offer, (D) an inventory, at an establishment associated with the promotional offer, of the goods which the promotional offer concerns, (E) a capacity, at an establishment associated with the promotional offer, to provide the services which the promotional offer concerns, (F) a level of excess capacity, at an establishment associated with the promotional offer, to provide the services which the promotional offer concerns, (G) a perishability of goods which the promotional offer concerns, and (H) a remaining shelf-life of goods which the promotional offer concerns.

The Google Map team comes out with another patent filing, and this one may have already been implemented in the system. If you've seen a second map within a Google Map that allows for moving a view frame, or helping with zooming in on specific areas, you'll have a sense of what they are describing here.

Secondary map in digital mapping system Invented by Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, Bret Steven Taylor, and Lars Eilstrup Rasmussen US Patent Application 20060139375 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on December 29, 2005

Abstract

Digital mapping techniques are disclosed that provide more flexibility to the user through the use of multiple views of map information, including a secondary map and a main map. The secondary map can provide the user with either a zoomed out or in relative to the main map, or a different type of map view (e.g., satellite images). The secondary map can be turned on and off by the user. The secondary map may include one or more viewing frames that indicate views (e.g., current and alternate views) of the main map. The user can move the main map, viewing frame, or secondary map to achieve desired map views. During such movement, the relationship between the main and secondary maps can be synchronous, partially synchronous, or serial.

Very similar to another patent application from a couple of weeks ago, Method and system for finding and aggregating reviews for a product, and filed on the same day, this patent application adds an inventor and some changes to the title, filing class, and some text within the claims and summary. The drawings and detailed description of the process appear to be substantially the same except for renumbering and some very minor edits.

Method, system and graphical user interface for providing reviews for a product Invented by Jan Matthias Ruhl, Mayur D. Datar, and Jessica Yoko Wai-min Lee US Patent Application 20060143158 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on December 14, 2004

Abstract

The embodiments disclosed herein include new, more efficient ways to collect product reviews from the Internet, aggregate reviews for the same product, and provide an aggregated review to end users in a searchable format. One aspect of the invention is a graphical user interface on a computer that includes a plurality of portions of reviews for a product and a search input area for entering search terms to search for reviews of the product that contain the search terms.

Yahoo

This first Yahoo patent application went quickly from filing to publication in four months. This appears to describe the pay-for-performance search advertising process presently in place on Yahoo.

System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine Invented by Darren J. Davis, Matthew Derer, Johann Garcia, Larry Greco, Tod E. Kurt, Thomas Kwong, Jonathan C. Lee, Ka Luk Lee, Preston Pfarner, and Steve Skovran Assigned to Overture Services, Inc. US Patent Application 20060143096 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on February 22, 2006

Abstract

A system and method for enabling information providers using a computer network such as the Internet to influence a position for a search listing within a search result list generated by an Internet search engine. The system and method of the present invention provides a database having accounts for the network information providers. Each account contains at least one search listing having at least three components: a description, a search term comprising one or more keywords, and a bid amount. The network information provider may add, delete, or modify a search listing after logging into his or her account via an authentication process. The network information provider influences the position for a search listing through a continuous online competitive bidding process. The bidding process occurs when the network information provider enters a new bid amount, which is preferably a money amount, for a search listing. The system then compares this bid amount with all other bid amounts for the same search term, and generates a rank value for all search listings having that search term. The rank value generated by the bidding process determines where the network information providers listing will appear on the search results list page that is generated in response to a query of the search term by a searcher located at a client computer on the computer network. A higher bid by a network information provider will result in a higher rank value and a more advantageous placement.

Bitmask access for managing blog content Invented by Vijay S. Ramachandran and Hitesh S. Shah Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060143208 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on December 29, 2004

Abstract

Methods, devices, and systems are directed towards managing a database using moderator determined attributes, and a contributor employable bitmask. In one embodiment, the database is employable for use in managing a weblog (blog). The bitmask is configured to enable contributors of a content item to modify selected options of an attribute for the provided content item. In one embodiment the bitmask is stored in the database and is associated with the content item in the database. By enabling a contributor to directly control options associated with an attribute for the content item, changes to selected attributes of the database's content may be made with minimum interaction with a database administrator. For example, in one embodiment, the contributor may directly control anonymity associated with the provided content item, access to the provided content item, and how the provided content items is displayed.

Microsoft

Machine learning classifiers may rely upon user behavior such as click-throughs and user reviews to help them rank pages in response to queries. This kind of reliance may mean that pages lacking user behavior information may fail to be ranked, and may not be presented to users so that they can gain that type of feedback. This Microsoft patent application describes the use of a second set of training data that doesn't depend upon user interaction, but rather looks at anchor text "to be a surrogate for the missing user feedback data."

System and method for using anchor text as training data for classifier-based search systems Invented by Harr Chen, Adwait Ratnaparkhi, Sonja S. Knoll, and Hsiao-Wuen Hon Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060143254 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on December 24, 2004

Abstract

A computer implemented information retrieval system is provided. The system includes a user input configured to receive a user query relative to the corpus. A machine learning classifier is trained with a first set of training data comprising anchor text relative to at least some of the documents in the corpus. A processing unit is adapted to interact with the classifier to obtain search results relative to the query using the machine learning classifier. In some aspects, the classifier is also trained with a second set of training data. A method of integrating a new document into a corpus of documents is also provided. A method of training a machine learning classifier for retrieving documents from a corpus using two distinct types of training data is also provided.

AOL

This next document looks at filtering search results based upon assigned categories for each of the results, comparisons of quality between them, and the use of expert domains for specific queries.

Filtering search results Invented by Abdur R. Chowdhury and Gregory S. Pass US Patent Application 20060143159 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on December 29, 2004

Abstract

Search results may be sorted or filtered based on scores assigned to the search results. For example, scores may be assigned to the search results based on characteristics of surrogate representations of the search results, which are relatively short summaries or excerpts of the search result that may be presented in place of the search results themselves, and those assigned scores may be used to sort or filter the search results. In one example of filtering, pairs of search results may be examined to identify significant drops in quality between the search results, which is indicated by a large relative or absolute difference in the scores of the search results. Search results with scores that indicate ranks that are lower than a lower ranked search result of the pair of search results may be eliminated when the difference between the scores assigned to the pair of search results exceeds a maximum allowable difference.

IBM

System and method for measuring image similarity based on semantic meaning Invented by Aleksandra Mojsilovic, Bernice Rogowitz, and Jose Gomes Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060143176 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on February 21, 2006

Abstract

A method includes deriving a plurality of semantic categories for representing important semantic cues in images, where each semantic category is modeled through a combination of perceptual features that define the semantics of that category and that discriminate that category from other categories; for each semantic category, forming a set of the perceptual features comprising required features and frequently occurring features; comparing an image to said semantic categories; and classifying said image as belonging to one of said semantic categories if all of the required features and at least one of the frequently occurring features for that semantic category are present in said image. A database contains image information, where the image information includes at least one of already classified images, network locations of already classified images and documents containing already classified images. The database is searched for images matching an input query, comprising, e.g., an image, text, or both.

Become, Inc.

Method for assigning relative quality scores to a collection of linked documents Invented by Rohit Kaul, Marcin Kadluczka, Yeogirl Yun, and Seong-Gon Kim Assigned to Become, Inc. US Patent Application 20060143197 Published on June 29, 2006 Filed on December 23, 2005

Abstract

A method for assigning relative quality scores to a collection of linked documents is presented. The method includes constructing a spring network according to a connectivity graph of a linked database and determining the strength of inter-nodal springs based on the link structure of the network and the displacements on end-nodes. The method may further include computing the displacements of the nodes in a spring network through an iterative process and obtaining the quality scores for documents from the converged displacements of nodes. The method may also include obtaining the relative quality scores for groups of documents. The method may further include assigning topic-specific quality scores to documents in a linked database.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 1:06 PM | Permalink

June 27, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: June 27, 2006 - Searching Amongst Malicious Web Sites

Microsoft's patent applications from the end of last week include ways for search engines to scan malicious web sites, clustering queries for more relevant searches, and extracting feature and formatting information from pages. IBM introduces a new query dependent page ranking algorithm, and a way to preload the URLs of a site into your history file before you've ever visited. Xerox searches for more meaningful snippets, Alcatel takes the PC out of search, and replaces it with TV, and British Telecommunications describes a way to make user profiles more helpful in returning search results.

Microsoft

This patent filing looks at user logs for web queries, and user feedback associated with those queries in an attempt to try to cluster the queries, and serve more relevant results in response to those queries.

Clustering Web Queries Invented by Ji-Rong Wen, Jian-Yun Nie, Ming-Jing Li, and Hong-Jiang Zhang Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060136455 Published on June 22, 2006 Filed on February 23, 2006

Abstract

Systems and methods for clustering Web queries are described. In one aspect, one or more of a same document and a plurality of similar documents selected by a user in response to a plurality of queries is identified. Responsive to this identification, a query cluster is generated. The cleric the query cluster indicates that the queries are similar independent of whether individual ones of the queries comprise similar composition with respect to other ones of the queries.

In this next document, Microsoft looks at how data on a web page can be extracted from the page, and parsed into information about the content on the page with its associated formatting, frequency of appearance, associated meta data, titles, and more. Statistics can be used to help understand the relevance of a query to the information extracted from a page.

Ranking search results using feature extraction Invented by Dmitriy Meyerzon and Hang Li Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060136411 Published on June 22, 2006 Filed on December 21, 2004

Abstract

Methods and computer-readable media are provided for ranking search results using feature extraction data. Each of the results of a search engine query is parsed to obtain data, such as text, formatting information, metadata, and the like. The text, the formatting information and the metadata are passed through a feature extraction application to extract data that may be used to improve a ranking of the search results based on relevance of the search results to the search engine query. The feature extraction application extracts features, such as titles, found in any of the text based on formatting information applied to or associated with the text. The extracted titles, the text, the formatting information and the metadata for any given search results item are processed according to a field weighting application for determining a ranking of the given search results item. Ranked search results items may then be displayed according to ranking.

The following patent application looks at ways of detecting malicious content on pages, during a crawl of the web, and in real time as a query is performed. I was reminded of Scandoo and a recent paper from Ben Edelman and SiteAdvisor, The Safety of Internet Search Engines, when reading it.

System and method for utilizing a search engine to prevent contamination Invented by Art Shelest and Eytan D. Seidman Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060136374 Published on June 22, 2006 Filed on December 17, 2004

Abstract

A system and method are incorporated within a search engine for preventing proliferation of malicious searchable content. The system includes a detection mechanism for detecting malicious searchable content within searchable content traversed by a web crawler. The system additionally includes a presentation mechanism for handling the detected malicious searchable content upon determination that the malicious searchable content is included in search results provided by the search engine. The presentation mechanism handles the detected malicious searchable content in order to prevent proliferation of the malicious searchable content to a receiver of the search results.

IBM

When you visit a site that you have previously been to before, your browser address bar will often show you pages on that site that you've seen, in a dropdown. This can help you return to a page that you may have been trying to return to. It might be helpful if this kind of feature was available on sites that you haven't visited before. Imagine arriving at a site you haven't seen previously, and being able to download a list of the URLs on the site.

The method in this filing involves a plugin to help a visitor find URLs of pages by providing an autocomplete, and a dropdown selection of URLs for pages on the site. URLs from the site could be added in the browser to its history files, an auto-complete file, and a site-map file.

Method and system for advanced downloading of URLS for WEB navigation Invented by Derek Kwan Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060136453 Published June 22, 2006 Filed on September 8, 2005

Abstract

A method, computer program product, and system for providing advanced downloading of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for a WEB browser running on a computer. The system is capable of providing a WEB browser with Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). The system comprises a client computer and a server. The client computer includes the WEB browser for use by a user and includes a URL component. The server provides WEB data to the client computer. The server includes a URL downloader, which is responsive to the URL component for downloading the URLs to the client computer.

A method for ranking pages in relation to a query; unlike pagerank, this method is query dependent and ranks pages associated with specific queries.

Dynamically ranking nodes and labels in a hyperlinked database Invented by Krishna Prasad Chitrapura and Srinivas Raaghav Kashyap Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060136098 Published on June 22, 2006 Filed on December 17, 2004

Abstract

The World Wide Web (WWW) can be modelled as a labelled directed graph G(V,E,L), in which V is the set of nodes, E is the set of edges, and L is a label function that maps edges to labels. This model, when applied to the WWW, indicates that V is a set of hypertext documents or objects, E is a set of hyperlinks connecting the documents in V, and the edge-label function represents the anchor-text corresponding to the hyperlinks. One can find a probabilistic ranking of the nodes for any given label, a ranking of the labels for any given node, and rankings of labels and pages using flow based models. Further, the flows can be computing using sparse matrix operations.

Xerox

Snippets shown in search results could be more reflective of the intent of a searcher, and help a searcher locate a document that best matches what they are looking for, instead of just displaying text that contains the keywords searched for. That's the focus of the next patent filing.

Systems and methods for using and constructing user-interest sensitive indicators of search results Invented by Daniel G. Bobrow; Ronald M. Kaplan Assigned to Xerox US Patent Application 20060136385 Published on June 22, 2006 Filed on December 21, 2004

Abstract

Techniques are provided to construct and use user-interest sensitive indicators of search results. A set of documents is determined based on one or more search terms. Passages within each selected document are identified based on the search terms. Condensation transformations applied to the passages to preferentially retain elements of the passage based on the search terms and user interest information. The resultant indicator is provides a user-interest sensitive signal of the meaning of the passage.

Alcatel

Alcatel describes how to search for content to display on television through a televison set box, without using a computer.

Method and system enabling Web content searching from a remote set-top control interface or device Invented by Prasad Golla Assigned to Alcatel US Patent Application 20060136383 Published on June 22, 2006 Filed on December 20, 2004

Abstract

A system for conducting a data search operation for content stored at nodes on a network includes a menu interface for enabling an interaction sequence of content category selection and definition-narrowing of those categories selected, a server application for interpreting the interaction sequence and for formulating a search query based on the interpretation, and a session application for submitting the query to a third party node, and for receiving and filtering results returned, the results forwarded to the menu interface for subsequent display and interaction. The network may combine wireless and land-based telephone, Internet, cable and satellite television.

British Telecommunications

This last patent filing looks towards the use of user profiles to help make more relevant searches.

Searching apparatus and methods Invented by Gary M. Ducatel and Behnam Azvine US Patent Application 20060136405 Published on June 22, 2006 Filed on January 23, 2004

Abstract

An apparatus and method are provided for improving database searching, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a search query comprising one or more search keywords from a user; accessing a user profile means arranged to provide data indicative of relatedness criteria between keywords from a set of documents, and identifying from said user profile means, for the or each search keyword, potentially-related keywords according to predetermined criteria; providing said potentially-related keywords to the user; receiving information from the user confirming that any potentially-related keywords are considered to be related keywords; in the event that any potentially-related keywords are confirmed by the user to be related keywords, incorporating such potentially-related keywords as keywords in an improved search query; and submitting the improved search query to a search engine. Also provided are an apparatus and method for creating and maintaining user profiles for use in the above searching apparatus and method.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 6:47 PM | Permalink

June 22, 2006

New Search Patents: June 22, 2006 - Google File System, Microsoft Blocks, and Yahoo Autonotifications

Google patents the Google File System, Microsoft claims a Functional Object Model for mobile devices, and Yahoo! (Overture) describes an autonotification process to inform advertisers of when a certain condition has been met concerning one of their ads.

Google

The authors of a paper on the Google File System (pdf) are listed as the inventors of this patent filing. Another similarity between the two documents is that both cite mostly the same reference documents. The patent and paper appear to cover much of the same ground. This looks like the patent for the Google File System.

Leasing scheme for data-modifying operations Invented by Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff, and Shun-Tak Leung Assigned to Google US Patent 7,065,618 Granted on June 20, 2006 Filed on June 30, 2003

Abstract

A system may facilitate performance of a data-modifying operation in a file network that includes multiple servers that store replicas of data. One of the servers may serve as a primary replica for one of the replicas of data and at least one other one of the servers may serve as at least one secondary replica for the replica of data. The system may send data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica based on a network topology and independently send a data-modifying control signal that requests execution of the data-modifying operation using the data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica.

Microsoft

When presenting a web page on a mobile device, it's sometimes best not to display the whole page. But trying to decide which parts to show, and which not to display can be difficult. More information is sometimes needed about the web page.

Microsoft has been experimenting with ways to identify what different parts of a web page do based upon the layout and functions of parts of pages, and a paper from Microsoft that has seen some popularity recently on this type of analysis has been one on Block-level Link Analysis (pdf).

It wasn't a surprise to see Wei-Ying Ma's name on this patent application, as one of the authors of that paper, and an earlier paper on VIPS: a Vision-based Page Segmentation Algorithm.

Another Wei-Ying Ma paper on that topic is Efficient Browsing of Web Search Results on Mobile Devices Based on Block Importance Model (pdf). It cites a function based analysis like the one described in this patent, and points to a document that explains some of the concepts - Function-Based Object Model Towards Website Adaptation (pdf). The other inventor listed in this patent, Jin-Lin Chen, is one of the authors of that paper. Taking a look at those papers may make understanding this patent easier.

Segmenting and indexing web pages using function-based object models Invented by Jin-Lin Chen and Wei-Ying Ma Assigned to Microsoft US Patent 7,065,707 Granted on June 20, 2006 Filed on June 24, 2002

Abstract

By understanding a website author's intention through an analysis of the function of a website, website content can be adapted for presentation or rendering in a manner that more closely appreciates and respects the function behind the website. A website's function is analyzed so that its content can be adapted to different client environments. A function-based object model (FOM) identifies objects associated with a website, and analyzes those objects in terms of their functions. Desktop oriented websites are adapted for mobile devices based on the FOM and on a mobile control intermediary language. While the FOM attempts to understand a website author's intention based on functional analysis of web content, the mobile control intermediary language enables the author to create web content that can be presented in various mobile devices by processing the objects, by extracting forms from the objects, and by generating a file in the mobile control intermediary language for each form.

Yahoo

This patent describes an autonotification system, enabling automated messages to be sent to an advertiser regarding their paid search listings when certain pre-defined conditions are met. Here are the areas those conditions listed in the patent encompass:

Position: related to the position of a listing,
Cost: related to the accumulated costs for some listings,
Account-balance: related to the funds remaining in advertiser's account (e.g., to pay for listings that are clicked on),
Impressions: the number of impressions received by some listings,
Clicks: the number of clicks received by some listings,
CTR: the click through rate of some listings,
CPC-too-high: if the cost per click (CPC) of a listing can be reduced without impacting its rank,
Average CPC too high: the average CPC, the total cost divided by the total clicks, is higher than some threshold,
Rank-CPC: related to the CPC for a given rank and term.

Automatic advertiser notification for a system for providing place and price protection in a search result list generated by a computer network search engine Invented by Narinder Pal Singh, Scott W. Snell, Douglas T. Huffman, Darren J. Davis, Thomas A. Soulanille, and Dominic Dough-Ming Cheung. Assigned to Overture Services, Inc. US Patent 7,065,500 Granted on June 20, 2006 Filed on September 26, 2001

Abstract

A notification method in a computer database system includes receiving a notification instruction from an owner associated with a search listing stored in the computer database system, monitoring conditions specified by the notification instruction for the search listing, and sending a notification to the owner upon detection of a changed condition of the search listing.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 3:41 AM | Permalink

June 19, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: June 19, 2006 - Autolinking, and Better Advertising through Deletion Predictions

Four patent applications from Google describe fighting spam in emails, providing product review searches, moving large amounts of data, and autolinking. Yahoo matches, and raises with five patent filings. One on watching deletions to choose better ads, another on serving dynamic information through a additional browser interface, and three more on multimedia and RSS.

Microsoft goes TV 2.0 with an electronic program guide, and describes a way of matching advertising content with certain search queries before those searches are made. IBM comes up with a unique way of presenting the results of a search from more than one search engine, and a way of reducing the amount of irrelevant results in a search by analyzing an initial set of results, identifying an appropriate additional query term from those results, and searching the original results again but with the additional query term included in the search.

Go Daddy describes a way of fighting spam in emails. Xerox employs collaborative filtering from previous users' searches to predict search results. Apostolos Gerasoulis, from Ask.com, with a couple of co-inventors, ranks and displays pages (objects) based upon linkage and textual data, and then defines a way to identifiy and assign topics to them.

Google

Email Spam

Emails with links in them could be considered spam if the links point to pages that are in a conceptual category considered spammy. This patent application really doesn't describe the concept categorization part of the process. That's done in a related patent application mentioned within this document, and the related document lists Georges Harik as one inventor. Dr. Harik's name is on a very large percentage of the patent applications involving Gmail-type processes.

Method and system to detect e-mail spam using concept categorization of linked content Invented by Johnny Chen US Patent Application 20060122957 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 3, 2004

Abstract

A system and method for detecting undesired electronic messages (e.g., spam) using concept categorization of hyperlinks is disclosed. A server receives an electronic message and retrieves web pages that correspond to hyperlinks in the message. The server performs concept categorization on the retrieved web pages based on semantic relationships in the received information to determine whether the electronic message meets predefined criteria associated with undesired messages.

Searching and Aggregating Product Reviews

If Google wanted to get into the product or services review business, the next patent filing describes a blue print for the process that might make an effective and innovative system.

Method and system for finding and aggregating reviews for a product Invented by Jan Matthias Ruhl and Mayur D. Datar US Patent Application 20060129446 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

Scaling and Distributing Data

Arvind Jain is the head of Research and Development in Google's Bangalore office, and has spoken at a number of conferences on infrastructure projects and issues involving such things as Google's crawl and indexing system, distributed file replication system, and compression techniques for large scale storage systems. He's listed as the inventor for this next Google filing.

System and method for scalable data distribution Invented by Arvind Jain US Patent Application 20060126201 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 10, 2004

Abstract

A system having a resource manager, a plurality of masters, and a plurality of slaves, interconnected by a communications network. To distribute data, a master determined that a destination slave of the plurality slaves requires data. The master then generates a list of slaves from which to transfer the data to the destination slave. The master transmits the list to the resource manager. The resource manager is configured to select a source slave from the list based on available system resources. Once a source is selected by the resource manager, the master receives an instruction from the resource manager to initiate a transfer of the data from the source slave to the destination slave. The master then transmits an instruction to commence the transfer.

Autolinking

Google's Autolink raised a lot of eyebrows, and brought some negative reactions. A Search Engine Watch Blog post from Danny Sullivan, Google Toolbar's AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out defined many of the issues around the toolbar feature. The following patent application explains how such a system might work from the search engine's perspective.

Providing useful information associated with an item in a document Invented by Gueorgui Djabarov US Patent Application 20060129910 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

A method includes recognizing an item within a first document based on a pattern associated with the item but not the exact content of the item. The method further includes identifying a link for the item and providing a second document that includes information associated with the item when the link for the item is selected.

Yahoo

Choosing Better Ads through User Behavior

Some queries involve the use of concepts and units, as described in at least five Yahoo patent filings (see previous patent posts in the Yahoo sections from Yahoo Units and Microsoft Redundancy Filters and More Yahoo Concepts and Google Predictive Searches.)

But sometimes a two term query isn't a concept as much as it is a couple of keywords that someone may use to search for something. If that person performs a second search after deleting one of the words, then the record of that deletion and second search might help Yahoo calculate "deletion probability scores" for words being used in these kind of two term queries.

This can be helpful when there isn't a good keyword based advertising match for that query, but there might be a good match individually for each of the terms that make up the query. The "deletion probability scores" can help determine which of the two terms to show keyword-based advertising for in search results.

System and methods for ranking the relative value of terms in a multi-term search query using deletion prediction Invented by Rosemary Jones and Daniel C. Fain US Patent Application 20060129534 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

The likely relevance of each term of a search-engine query of two or more terms is determined by their deletion probability scores. If the deletion probability scores are significantly different, the deletion probability score can be used to return targeted ads related to the more relevant term or terms along with the search results. Deletion probability scores are determined by first gathering historical records of search queries of two or more terms in which a subsequent query was submitted by the same user after one or more of the terms had been deleted. The deletion probability score for a particular term of a search query is calculated as the ratio of the number of times that particular term was itself deleted prior to a subsequent search by the same user divided by the number of times there were subsequent search queries by the same user in which any term or terms including that given term was deleted by the same user prior to the subsequent search. Terms are not limited to individual alphabetic words.

Browser Interface Helpers

This next document describes some ways to provide additional dynamic information to someone via a toolbar styled interface, while they are browsing pages on the web.

Method of controlling an Internet browser interface and a controllable browser interface Invented by Thomas J. Shafron Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060129937 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method of dynamically controlling and displaying an Internet browser interface, and to a dynamically controllable Internet browser interface. In accordance with the present invention, a browser interface may be customized using a controlling software program that may be provided by an Internet content provider, an ISP, or that may reside on an Internet user's computer. The controlling software program enables the Internet user, the content provider, or the ISP to customize and control the information and/or functionality of a user's browser and browser interface.

RSS Enhancements

The following three Yahoo filings all list the same inventors, including John Thrall who is the head of media search engineering, for Yahoo Search. They provide different aspects of using RSS with multimedia files.

Syndicating multiple media objects with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, and John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129917 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating more than one media object in an element using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). In one embodiment, multiple media objects with at least one shared characteristic are syndicated under the same element. For example, a single media object can come in multiple formats and/or compression rates.

Syndicating multimedia information with RSS Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129907 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for adding descriptive information to a Real Simple Syndication (RSS) document. The descriptive information describes the content of media objects syndicated through the document. The descriptive information can be used to provided additional information to a subscriber, and can be used in searching for syndicated media content.

RSS rendering via a media player Invented by Andrew R. Volk, David D. Hall, John J. Thrall US Patent Application 20060129916 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 1, 2005

Abstract

System and method for syndicating media objects through a link to a media player using Real Simple Syndication (RSS). A content provider may not want to give direct access to a media object to a subscriber. Instead a content provider can give the subscriber a link to a media player that can access the media object.

Microsoft

Searching electronic program guide data Invented by Pradhan S. Rao, David Hendler Sloo, Daniel Danker, and George K. Nyako Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060130098 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

Searching electronic program guide (EPG) data is described. The EPG data may be compartmentalized into channel metadata that describes characteristics of one or more channels and content metadata that describes characteristics of one or more content items. In a implementation, a method includes searching channel metadata and content metadata. A result of the searching is formed for output in conjunction with an electronic program guide (EPG).

System and method for indexing and prefiltering Invented by Brian Burdick, Joshua J. Forman, Kevin P. Kornelson, Murali Vajjiravel, and Rajeev Prasad Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060129555 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method and system are provided for selecting advertisements for presentation to a user in response to a user search query. The system may include a keyword server for parsing the user search query and an index server for receiving the parsed search query. The index server may include an index of advertising phrases and pre-filtering components for comparing index entries to the parsed user search query in order to discard non-matching index entries and locate matching entries. The pre-filtering components may include either a phrase length pre-filtering component or a word hash pre-filtering component. The system may additionally include a listing server for sorting through the matching entries located by the index server and further filtering the matching entries for retrieval and presentation to the user.

IBM

Ring method, apparatus, and computer program product for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment Invented by Wade Shelby Beavers and David Joseph Borrillo Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129530 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for managing federated search results in a heterogeneous environment. A user enters a search term and the search term is submitted to multiple selected search engines. Search results are gathered from each selected search engine. A search ring is generated including a ring section to represent each of the selected search engines for enabling the user to view search results from one or more of the selected search engines.

Method and system for suggesting search engine keywords Invented by Cary Lee Bates Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060129531 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 9, 2004

Abstract

A search engine receives a search query having one or more keywords. The documents in the result set from that search query are analyzed to identify one or more additional keywords that further segment, or separate, the initial result set. These additional keywords are presented to the user who then selects whether to include or exclude documents matching the additional keywords. In this way, the number of documents in the initial result set is reduced in a relatively quick and effortless manner.

Go Daddy

Email filtering system and method Invented by Brad Owen and Jason Steiner US Patent Application 20060129644 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 14, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods of the present invention allow filtering out spam and phishing email messages based on the links embedded into the email messages. In a preferred embodiment, an Email Filter extracts links from the email message and obtains desirability values for the links. The Email Filter may route the email message based on desirability values. Such routing includes delivering the email message to a Recipient, delivering the message to a Quarantine Mailbox, or deleting the message.

Xerox

Personalized web search method Invented by Lisa S. Purvis Assigned to Xerox Corporation US Patent Application 20060129533 Published June 15, 2006 Filed December 15, 2004

Abstract

A method for contextualizing search results is disclosed. The method includes performing a traditional web query that returns a set of result pages, using collaborative filtering techniques to generate a set of predicted pages, comparing the set of predicted pages with the set of result pages, and ranking the set of result pages so that result pages that are also included in the set of predicted pages are ranked higher than those that are not. Methods herein also contemplate using the search history of the user or others to refine the results of searches.

Ask.com

Relevancy-based database retrieval and display techniques Invented by Tao Yang, Wei Wang, and Apostolos Gerasoulis US Patent Application 20060129552 Published June 15, 2006 Filed February 2, 2006

Abstract

Techniques to retrieve, rank and display data objects retrieved form a database are described. In particular, methods to assign a global ranking value to a data object based on a combination of that object's link-based (e.g., vector-space cluster analysis) and text-based (e.g., word frequency) ranks are described. Additional techniques to determine a set of concepts, topics or key words associated with each retrieved data objects are described.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 8:42 PM | Permalink

June 13, 2006

Google Earth Won't Have Distribution Blocked

Google Earth is out in a new version with new features, as Greg Sterling will be detailing more on the blog later today. But meanwhile, Google escapes having an injunction against the software. Judge won't block distribution of Google Earth from News.com covers how Google is being sued by Skyline Software Systems over a patent dispute on terrain mapping. The judge in the case has denied a preliminary injunction request to block downloads of Google Earth.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:43 AM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

New Search Patents: June 12, 2006 - More Yahoo Concepts and Google Predictive Searches

Microsoft describes the use of block level analysis to improve mobile browsing, writes of allowing searchers to customize search results, presents a query refinement system which provides concepts for users to choose from, and offers a look at a video browser for video search. IBM has filed a patent which could let a browser be used to exclude selected pages, and pages linked to or from those pages, from search engine results. In another filing, they detail how a focused random crawl could be used to gather statistical information on chosen topics.

Google further builds upon the use of predictive queries, in this instance to speed up searches, especially for people using wireless access to the web. Yahoo adds two more patent applications which use concept units derived from searchers' queries to index the web. In this case, the focus is upon how taxonomies could be created from those concepts.

Microsoft

Microsoft's Vision based Page Segmentation Algorithm (VIPS) was intended "to extract the semantic structure of a web page based on its visual presentation." We saw an example of how this could be used in a paper by Microsoft titled Block-level Link Analysis, where the location of a link on a page might tell us more about that link. The following patent uses VIPs to decide what to show searchers, when displaying a thumbnail of a result from a search.

Block importance analysis to enhance browsing of web page search results Invented by Xing Xie, Wei-Ying Ma, and Gengxin Miao Assigned to Micrsoft Corporation US Patent Application 20060123042 Publised June 8, 2006 Filed December 7, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods for block importance analysis to enhance browsing of web page search results are described. In one aspect, a server analyzes content of a document as a function of multiple block importance criteria. The server assigns a respective block importance level of multiple importance levels to respective block(s) of the analyzed content. The server generates one or more customized documents from block(s) of the content as a function of respective assigned block importance level(s) of the block(s). Each of the one or more customized documents is generated in a particular format of multiple formats to enhance user interaction with the document on a small form factor computing device.

How much control should a searcher have over what type of information appears on a search results page from a search engine? There really isn't much choice provided by the major search engines as to what searchers see. This patent application explores some options.

System and method for customization of search results Invented by Ramez Naam Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060122968 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 2, 2004

Abstract

A system and method are provided for customizing search result descriptions for results returned by a search engine. The search result descriptions may be obtained through a search over a computer network. The system includes a search result description request component for enabling selection of particular data for retrieval by the search engine. The system additionally includes a search result description generator for retrieving and returning the requested data. The system also includes a search result description renderer for displaying search result descriptions in a selected manner.

System and method for query refinement to enable improved searching based on identifying and utilizing popular concepts related to users' queries Invented by Raman Chandrasekar, James C. Finger, II, and Eric B. Watson Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060122991 Published June 8, 2006 Filed January 26, 2006

Abstract

Refining a user query is disclosed. In one method, a query is received from a user, and then mapped to one or more search concepts. A list of search concepts associated with the query is then displayed. Alternatively or additionally, the search concepts associated with the query are used to provide a set of improved search results. In another method, a number of queries from a number of users are analyzed to identify two or more search concepts, and a popularity value is assigned to them based on the queries. Thus, the relative popularity of the respective search concepts can be determined. Alternatively or additionally, a preferred search query for the search concepts can be determined. The popularity and preferred queries can be used to allow automatic or user-initiated refinement.

System and method for video browsing using a cluster index Invented by Nebojsa Jojic and Sumit Basu Assigned to Microsoft US Patent Application 20060120624 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 8, 2004

Abstract

A "Video Browser" provides an intuitive user interface for indexing, and interactive visual browsing, of particular elements within a video recording. In general, the Video Browser operates by first generating a set of one or more mosaic images from the video recording. In one embodiment, these mosaics are further clustered using an adjustable similarity threshold. User selection of a particular video mosaic then initiates a playback of corresponding video frames. However, in contrast to conventional mosaicing schemes which simply play back the set of frames used to construct the mosaic, the Video Browser provides a playback of only those individual frames within which a particular point selected within the image mosaic was observed. Consequently, user selection of a point in one of the image mosaics serves to provide a targeted playback of only those frames of interest, rather than playing back the entire image sequence used to generate the mosaic.

IBM

Want to exclude certain pages or pages linked to or from that page from search results that you see in a search engine? The method described in the following document would enable a browser to help make that happen.

Administration of search results Invented by Susann Marie Keohane, Gerald Francis McBrearty, Shawn Patrick Mullen, Jessica Murillo, and Johnny Meng-Han Shieh Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060122972 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 2, 2004

Abstract

Administration of search results including displaying by a browser a set of search results from a web search, each search result containing a link to a web page; selecting a search result for exclusion from display, thereby identifying a selected search result, including selecting for exclusion from display search results containing related links, wherein related links include links related to the link in the selected search result; and displaying the search results without the selected search result and without the search results containing related links.

Gathering information on a specific topic throughout the web could be helpful in many endeavors, including intelligence gathering and marketing research. A focused random crawl on a specific topic could gather information more quickly and inexpensively than a full crawl of the web.

System, method, and service for using a focused random walk to produce samples on a topic from a collection of hyper-linked pages Invented by Ziv Bar-Yossef, Tapas Kanungo, and Robert Krauthgamer Assigned to IBM US Patent Application 20060122998 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 4, 2004

Abstract

A focused random walk system produces samples of on-topic pages from a collection of hyper-linked pages such as Web pages. The focused random walk system utilizes a focused random walk to produce a focused sample, which is a random sample of Web pages focused on a topic. The focused random walk system uniformly samples pages iteratively, where each iteration follows a random link from a union of the in-links and out-links of a page. The system then classifies this randomly selected link to determine whether the page is on-topic. The random walk sampling process could comprise a hard-focus method that selects only on-topic pages at each step of the focused random walk, or a soft-focus method that allows limited divergence to off-topic pages.

Google

In recent months, Google has had patent applications published on the use of predictive queries in the context of making it easier to work with mobile devices, in applications like Google Suggest, and in a version of Google Suggest system for languages that don't use alphabetical characters. This next patent application talks about predictive queries primarily in the context of increasing the speed of returned results.

Predictive information retrieval Invented by Shumeet Baluja and Henry Rowley US Patent Application 20060122976 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 3, 2004

Abstract

A computer-implemented method for generating results for a client-requested query involves receiving a query produced by a client communication device, generating a result for the query in response to reception of the query, determining one or more predictive follow-up requests before receiving an actual follow-up request from the client device, and initiating retrieval of information associated with the one or more predictive follow-up requests, and transmitting at least part of the result to the client device, and then transmitting to the client device at least part of the information associated with the one or more predictive follow-up requests.

Yahoo

Yahoo is building a nice series of patents involving indexing on the basis of concept units. Last month, we looked at a newly granted patent from Yahoo involving the generation of concept units from search queries. As noted there, the patent is one of three filings that use the unit concept to help understand and index pages. A couple of newly published patent applications from Yahoo build upon the methods described in those documents to categorize concepts and build taxonomies of concepts.

Automatic generation of taxonomies for categorizing queries and search query processing using taxonomies Invented by Shyam Kapur, Jignashu Parikh, and Deepa Joshi Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060122994 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 6, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods for processing search requests are provided, including automatic generation of taxonomies and query processing using those taxonomies.

Search processing with automatic categorization of queries Invented by Shyam Kapur, Jignashu Parikh, and Deepa Joshi Assigned to Yahoo US Patent Application 20060122979 Published June 8, 2006 Filed December 6, 2004

Abstract

Search results are processed using search requests, including analyzing received queries in order to provide a more sophisticated understanding of the information being sought. A concept network is generated from a set of queries by parsing the queries into units and defining various relationships between the units. From these concept networks, queries can be automatically categorized into categories, or more generally, can be associated with one or more nodes of a taxonomy. The categorization can be used to alter the search results or the presentation of the results to the user. As an example of alterations of search results or presentation, the presentation might include a list of "suggestions" for related search query terms. As other examples, the corpus searched might vary depending on the category or the ordering or selection of the results to present to the user might vary depending on the category. Categorization might be done using a learned set of query-node pairs where a pair maps a particular query to a particular node in the taxonomy. The learned set might be initialized from a manual indication of which queries go with which nodes and enhanced has more searches are performed. One method of enhancement involves tracking post-query click activity to identify how a category estimate of a query might have varied from an actual category for the query as evidenced by the category of the post-query click activity, e.g., a particular hits of the search results that the user selected following the query. Another method involved determining relationships between units in the form of clusters and using clustering to modify the query-node pairs.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 12:47 AM | Permalink

June 8, 2006

New Search Patents: June 8, 2006 - Stanford updates Pagerank Patent

The patent for pagerank has been updated, Hewlett-Packard introduces advanced searching options for searchers, IBM patents a query translation server to help search engines provide search results in more languages than English, Microsoft uncovers a way to learn more about the people who are clicking upon ads, and Yahoo integrates external sites into its shopping portal.

Stanford University

The original pagerank patents were:

Method for node ranking in a linked database (Filed January 9, 1998 and granted September 4, 2001)

Method for scoring documents in a linked database (Filed July 6, 2001, and granted September 28, 2004)

In many ways, this new version of the first patent looks like an effort to combine some of the aspects of the two documents, while correcting some typos and errors within them. The main difference between the two older patent filings and the new one is an expanded "summary of the invention" section. The file date is actually a few days before the second pagerank patent to be granted, and that may present a clue as to why this update was filed to begin with - which appears to be to make it fit better with the second patent, on "scoring documents in a linked database."

Method for node ranking in a linked database Invented by Lawrence Page Assigned to The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University US Patent 7,058,628 Granted June 6, 2006 Filed July 2, 2001

Abstract:

A method assigns importance ranks to nodes in a linked database, such as any database of documents containing citations, the world wide web or any other hypermedia database. The rank assigned to a document is calculated from the ranks of documents citing it. In addition, the rank of a document is calculated from a constant representing the probability that a browser through the database will randomly jump to the document. The method is particularly useful in enhancing the performance of search engine results for hypermedia databases, such as the world wide web, whose documents have a large variation in quality.

Hewlett-Packard

Introduces sliding scales for searchers, to choose which factors are most important to them in results returned by a search engine, including things such as inbound links to a page, readability, differently prioritized keywords, age of document, language of document, and others.

System and method for optimizing search results Invented by Graham S. Masters Assigned to Hewlett-Packard US Patent 7,058,624 Granted June 6, 2006 Filed June 20, 2001

Abstract

A system and method for searching for documents identified in a database, wherein the method comprises the steps of establishing a first search criterion associated with a keyword match between a keyword entry and the identified documents, establishing at least one additional search criterion based on a document attribute of the identified documents, determining a criterion matching score for identified documents for each of the established search criteria, associating a scaling factor with each of the established search criteria, calculating an overall matching score for a selection of the identified documents from the criterion matching scores and scaling factors associated therewith, and ordering the selection of identified documents based upon the calculated overall matching scores.

IBM

Method and system for providing native language query service Invented by Yue Pan, Li Ping Yang, and Lindon Robertson Assigned to IBM US Patent 7,058,626 Granted June 6, 2006 Filed July 28, 2000

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for providing native language query service for Internet users by using a plurality of search engines. The method of the present invention includes the steps of: (a) receiving at a site an original query request from one user; (b) selecting a suitable search engine; (c) translating said query words of native language into query words of dedicated language of said selected search engine; (d) constructing a new query request directing to said search engine; (e) sending said new query request and receiving a returned query result; (f) sending said query result back to said user as a query result in relation to said original query request.

Microsoft

This next patent doesn't transmit personal information to advertisers about those click through ads to their sites, but it might tell them more about the sites the ads were on when the click happened. For instance, If an ad was mostly displayed on sports and international news pages, that information would be shared with the advertiser so that they can tailor their landing pages for those types of customers.

Transmission of information during ad click-through Invented by David E. Heckerman, D. Maxwell Chickering, and Daniel Rosen Assigned to Microsoft US Patent 7,058,592 Granted June 6, 2006 Filed November 29, 1999

Abstract

The transmission of information during ad click-through is disclosed. In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method selects an ad to be displayed on a web page, as one of a plurality of ads within a current cluster in which each of the ad has a probability to be selected. The method displays the ad on the web page, and then detects activation--for example, click-through--of the displayed ad. The method transmits information to an entity associated with the ad, such as an advertiser, upon detecting click-through or other activation of the ad. In one embodiment, the information transmitted includes information regarding the current cluster.

Yahoo

Ecommerce through a site like Yahoo Shopping may work with other sites that are online elsewhere, but also use Yahoo Shopping as a proxy. This invention helps make that possible by making that integration transparent.

System and methods for implementing code translations that enable persistent client-server communication via a proxy Invented by Greg I. Chiou, Lev Stesin, Arup Mukherjee Assigned to Yahoo! Inc. US Patent 7,058,699 Granted June 6, 2006 Filed August 29, 2000

Abstract

Systems and methods for extending or modifying the behavior of mobile (downloadable) software, such as JavaScript, HTML, and/or data that can be downloaded to a client device. One or more morphing agents are provided for translating and modifying code and data from a software source, such as a remote server. Each morphing agent translates and modifies one or more particular types of code. For example, one morphing agent may be provided for processing JavaScript code and another may be provided for processing HTML code and data. Each morphing agent typically includes a tokenizer module, a parser module and a translation module, each of which follows specific rule sets. Original software content is first tokenized according to a set of tokenizer rules, and subsequently parsed according to a set of parser rules. The parsed code is then translated according to the set of translator rules to produce the desired modified software content. An exception handler module is also provided for implementing exception rules when an exception occurs.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 1:04 PM | Permalink

June 5, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: June 5, 2006 - Taking Care of Web Decay, Dead Links, and Parked Domains

Yahoo provides an XML based bid management tool, and a way to maintain a persistent link to dynamic information between a browser and specific web pages. Microsoft marries email and search to provide a way store and track queries, and also introduces a method of calculating similarity between pages without the computational overhead of a Latent Semantic Indexing methodology. IBM aims to improve text search by preprocessing and maintaining relationship data between documents, delivers a means of spellchecking URLs, describes a process for personalizing web pages which include personalized search results, and introduces a method to rank pages while accounting for dead links and the decay of content on web pages.

ISEN, L.L.C., has developed an internet search environment number for internet databases to expand search to deep content, rarely indexed by web-based search engines. Zoom Information, Inc., has developed a method of collecting data about people from the web, to present in a structured database to make searching for information about people easier. Bing Swen, from Peking University, has created an improved process for search result clustering. Two Amazon employees have had a patent application published which may correct misspellings in queries in order to return results to searchers.

IBM

This first document may be the star of this batch of search filings, and if you decide to try to read through any of these, this may be a good choice. Two of the inventors listed in this patent application are now at Yahoo. Ironically, one of their main examples of the problem of web decay involves the Yahoo Directory.

There are a number of nice ideas here, which touch on why dead links and web decay aren't good for search engines, how most dead links can be identified regardless of whether a server returns a 404 error message or not, and how some exceptions such as parked domains (including expired domains purchased to benefit a site by using promotional efforts of previous owners) are now being looked at carefully by search engineers.

Methods and apparatus for assessing web page decay Inventors: Andrei Zary Broder, Ziv Bar-Yossef, Shanmagasundaram Ravikumar, Andrew Tomkins US Patent Application 20060112089 Published May 25, 2006 Filed: November 22, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods are herein disclosed for assessing the staleness of a web page. In particular, in one method of the present invention, the staleness of a web page is assessed by examining internal date references within the web page. In another method of the present invention, the staleness of a web page is assessed by examining the meta-data associated with the web page. In a further method of the present invention, the staleness of a hyperlinked web page is determined by examining the link status of the hyperlinks. If the web page has a relatively large number of dead links, it is assessed as being a stale web page. In a still further method of the present invention, the link status of web pages in the neighborhood of the web page being assessed is likewise examined.

Method and system for improving a text search Inventors: Michael J. Dockter, Jochen F. Doerre, Ronald W. Lynn, Joseph A. Munoz, Randal J. Richardt, and Roland Seiffert US Patent 7,054,882 Granted May 30, 2006 Filed: February 12, 2003

Abstract

A method and system for improving text searching is disclosed. The method and system provides a network of document relationship and utilizes the network of document relationships to identify the region of documents that can be used to satisfy a user's request. In a preferred embodiment, the text searching method in accordance with the present invention augments a conventional text search by using information on document relationships and metadata. The text searching method and system improves upon conventional text search techniques by incorporating relationship metadata to define regions to search within. In the present invention the definition of a region is not limited to just categories as it includes neighborhoods around individual documents and sets which have been user defined.

Spell checking URLs in a resource Inventors: Mark Joseph Hamzy US Patent Application 20060112066 Published May 25, 2006 Filed: November 22, 2004

Abstract

Methods, systems, and computer program products are provided for spell checking URLs in a resource. Embodiments include identifying within a resource a URL, determining whether the URL is valid, and marking the URL as misspelled if the URL is invalid. In typical embodiments, determining whether the URL is valid is carried out by resolving a domain name contained in the URL. Typical embodiments also include suggesting an alternative spelling for the URL. In some embodiments, suggesting an alternative spelling for the URL is carried out by identifying a keyword in the resource, querying a search engine with the identified keyword, and selecting a URL in dependence upon search results returned by the search engine.

System and method for generating personalized web pages Inventors: Alexander W. Holt and Michael E. Moran US Patent Application 20060112079 Published May 25, 2006 Filed: November 23, 2004

Abstract

A web page personalization system and method. The system comprises: a web application server for serving a web page that includes personalized search results for a user requesting the web page; a content repository for storing content for the web page; a profiling system for dynamically providing profile attributes of the user when the web page is requested; and a search engine for generating the personalized search results using a query that is based a selected set of the provided profile attributes.

Yahoo

A bid management tool based upon XML.

Use of extensible markup language in a system and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine (Overture) Inventors: Stephan Cunningham, Anthony Molinaro, Frank Maritato, Jr., Peng Zhao, and Nick Conrad US Patent 7,054,857 Granted May 30, 2006 Filed: May 8, 2002

Abstract

A database search apparatus and method for generating a search result list which responds to Extensible Markup Language (XML) requests from a client to a server of an on-line marketplace. A bid management tool is operable on a client computer to manage search listings and account information of one or more advertisers. The client application communicates with the server via an XML-based application program interface. The bid management tool provides functions for reporting account activity, modifying accounts and manual, timed or event-driven changes to search listings including listings of several advertisers.

The process described in the next patent application provides a way for a user to set up their browser interface so that dynamic information may be added to, and updated on their browser interface from different sites, regardless of whether they remain on that site, or go elsewhere, through the use of Active X controls.

Method of controlling an Internet browser interface and a controllable browser interface Inventors: Thomas J. Shafron US Patent Application 20060112102 Published May 25, 2006 Filed: February 2, 2006

See also, patent application number: 20060112341

Abstract

Microsoft

A hybrid use of search and email, enables users to search email, save queries with their email, and have automated queries performed and stored with their email on a periodic basis of their choice.

Storing searches in an e-mail folder Inventors: Imran I. Qureshi US Patent Application 20060112081 Published May 25, 2006 Filed: November 23, 2004

Abstract

A method for saving search query information on a server coupled to the Internet as a search folder. The method may include the steps of: identifying a user communicating with the server; storing the search query associated with the user in a data store on the server responsive to a user instruction to store the search query; and submitting the query to an Internet search engine for execution based on a triggering event. A data structure for storing the search folder is also described.

Method and system for determining similarity of items based on similarity objects and their features Inventors: Benyu Zhang, Hua-Jun Zeng, Wei-Ying Ma, Zheng Chen, Ning Liu, and Jun Yan US Patent Application 20060112068 Published May 25, 2006 Filed: November 23, 2004

Abstract

A method and system for determining similarity between items is provided. To calculate similarity scores for pairs of items, the similarity system initializes a similarity score for each pair of objects and each pair of features. The similarity system then iteratively calculates the similarity scores for each pair of objects based on the similar scores of the pairs of features calculated during a previous iteration and calculates the similarity scores for each pair of features based on the similarity scores of the pairs of objects calculated during a previous iteration. The similarity system implements an algorithm that is based on a recursive definition of the similarities between objects and between features. The similarity system continues the iterations of recalculating the similarity scores until the similarity scores converge on a solution.

ISEN, L.L.C.

Internet search environment number system Inventors: Matthew S. Theobald and Paul Thompson US Patent Application 20060116992 Published June 1, 2006 Filed: November 28, 2005

Abstract

The present invention discloses an Internet search environment number ("ISEN") system that provides researchers with a tool to locate and search relevant, evaluated online databases. The ISEN system is a portal that comprehensively catalogs the Internet's databases thereby making information located on the Internet readily accessible from both visible and invisible database resources. The ISEN system facilitates access and adds value by creating more effective and efficient Internet search experiences. The ISEN system takes advantage of a persistent locator for database resources to guarantee users will always be able to locate desired resources no matter where they move or if the content changes.

Zoom Information, Inc.

Method for maintaining people and organization information Inventors: Jonathan Stern, Jeremy W. Rothman-Shore, Kosmas Karadimitriou, and Michel Decary US Patent 7,054,886 Granted May 30, 2006 Filed: July 27, 2001

Abstract

A database is formed and maintained by computer-automated means extracting information from a global computer network. The database contains information about people and organizations. The present invention method provides continual updates to the information stored in the database by the people named in the database and by the automated means. Integrity of the automatically extracted information is maintained. A link from the invention database to a third party data system provides updates in the information in the database to be communicated to the third party data system for updating and maintaining data of the third party data system. The database may serve as an email communication clearinghouse where senders do not need to know the email address of a person named in the database but rather leaves messages through that person's record in the database. Targeted advertising to a named person is provided during his accessing the database. The targeted advertising is based on information about the named person as stored in the database. The database may be queried by any combination of person name, job title, organization name and field of business of the organization. The invention method provides clipping service which monitors changes in the information stored in the database and notifies interested parties of detected changes.

Others

Bing Swen teaches at Peking University, and has been involved in SIGHAN, a Special Interest Group of the Association for Computational Linguistics, and the last Asian Information Retrieval Symposium.

Method for search result clustering Inventors: Bing Swen US Patent Application 20060117002 Published June 1, 2006 Filed: November 1, 2005

Abstract

Methods and systems are presented to predetermine and record the classes of each indexed document with respect to each of its index keywords, and to provide high quality and relevant classification of the document when it is searched with said keyword. Document classes, recorded in advance, are used as the clustering information of each document in the search results to realize efficient, large-scale and high quality search result clustering. One embodiment provides a method for search result clustering, which includes recording the classes of each indexed document when the document is searched with each of its index keywords. This method further includes grouping the search results according to the classes of each result document with respect to the keyword or keywords contained in the search query. By prerecording the classes of each document with respect to each index keyword, the classes of each document in the search results in response to a search query can be directly determined via the keywords included in the search query. Each result document is put into each of its classes associated with each of the search keywords, and the union of all the classes of the result documents is used to construct the final document clusters for the search results. The clusters are ranked according to the ranks of documents included in each cluster and the weights of the clustered documents in the corresponding cluster. The clustered search results are presented to the user in such a way that clusters with higher ranks, and documents with higher ranks in each cluster are preferentially presented. Each cluster can be displayed and navigated in an independent framed subarea of the output window.

The inventors listed in the following patent application are Amazon.com employees, though the document hasn't been assigned to Amazon, and examples within the document include searches for books within an online bookstore. When a search query is misspelled, rather than not returning results to a searcher, the process here may try to find a suitable replacement. So, for instance, a search for "The De Vinci Code " shows results that begin with "The Da Vinci Code." at Amazon.com

Search query processing to identify related search terms and to correct misspellings of search terms Inventors: Ruben Ernesto Ortega and Dwayne Edward Bowman US Patent Application 20060117003 Published June 1, 2006 Filed: January 6, 2006

Abstract

A search engine process predicts the correct spellings of search terms within multiple-term search queries. In one embodiment, when a user submits a multiple-term search query that includes a non-matching term and at least one matching term, a table is accessed to look up a set of terms that are "related" to the matching term or terms. A spelling comparison function is then used to determine whether any of these related terms is sufficiently similar in spelling to the non-matching term to be deemed a candidate correctly-spelled replacement. A candidate replacement term may automatically be substituted for the non-matching term, or may be suggested to the user as a replacement. The invention also includes a process for identifying terms that are related to each other based on the relatively high frequencies with which they co-occur in search queries of users, database records, and/or specific database fields.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 7:44 PM | Permalink

May 25, 2006

New Search Patents: May 25, 2006 - Yahoo Units and Microsoft Redundancy Filters

New patents from this week from Yahoo on indexing by concepts and on uses of scripts on different computers to share data between them. Microsoft looks at reranking search results based upon redundancy, annotations on web pages, and showing web ads based upon a person's television viewing habits. IBM comes up with smarter bookmarks, and Amazon shows smarter search results when a first query doesn't quite work.

Yahoo

This first patent from Yahoo is part of a trilogy of related patent filings. The other two haven't been granted yet:

Systems and methods for search processing using superunits

Universal search interface systems and methods

It's interesting to see how these three fit together into a search system. Co-occurrence seems to play a large role under this system.

Systems and methods for generating concept units from search queries Inventors: Shyam Kapur and Deepa Joshi US Patent 7,051,023 Granted May 23, 2006 Filed: November 12, 2003

Abstract

Systems and method for enhancing search functionality provided to a user. In certain aspects, a query processing engine automatically decomposes queries into constituent units that are related to concepts in which a user may be interested. The query processing engine decomposes queries into one or more constituent units per query using statistical methods. In certain aspects, no real world knowledge is used in determining units. In other aspects, aspects of world and content knowledge are introduced to enhance and optimize performance, for example, manually using a team of one or more information engineers.

Method and system for enabling a script on a first computer to communicate and exchange data with a script on a second computer over a network Inventors: Thomas Joshua Shafron and Christopher Staib US Patent 7,051,119 Granted May 23, 2006 Filed: July 12, 2001

Abstract

A method and system for enabling a script on a first computer to communicate and exchange data with a script on a second computer so as to provide access by the script to data typically inaccessible by a script. The method and system enable a first computer to control the Internet navigation of a second computer, and also enable instant messaging between a first computer and a member of a synchronization group. The computers may be connectable with each other over any type of network (e.g., LAN, WAN, intranet, Internet, cellular, tc.).

Microsoft

This first patent aims at identifying and filtering documents that contain roughly the same information, and identifying and filtering off-topic information, in search results.

Utilizing information redundancy to improve text searches Inventors: Eric D. Brill and Susan T. Dumais US Patent 7,051,014 Granted May 23, 2006 Filed: June 18, 2003

Abstract

Architecture for improving text searches using information redundancy. A search component is coupled with an analysis component to rerank documents returned in a search according to a redundancy values. Each returned document is used to develop a corresponding word probability distribution that is further used to rerank the returned documents according to the associated redundancy values. In another aspect thereof, the query component is coupled with a projection component to project answer redundancy from one document search to another. This includes obtaining the benefit of considerable answer redundancy from a second data source by projecting the success of the search of the second data source against a first data source.

Scalable computing system for managing annotations Inventors: Scott C. Cottrille, Yoram Yaacovi, and Antony Halim US Patent 7,051,274 Granted May 23, 2006 Filed: June 24, 1999

Abstract

A scalable computing system for managing annotations is capable of handling requests for annotations to millions of documents a day. The computing system consists of multiple tiers of servers. A tier I server indicates whether there are annotations associated with a content source. A tier II server indexes the annotations. A tier III server stores the body of the annotation.

System and method of inserting advertisements into an information retrieval system display Inventors: Phillip Y. Goldman, Michael A. Killianey, and Daniel J. Zigmond; US Patent 7,051,351 Granted May 23, 2006 Filed: March 8, 1999

Abstract

Systems and methods for selecting and inserting advertisements in an information document displayed to a user, wherein the selection is based at least in part on television programming viewed by the user. The systems and methods may be implemented using the Internet or another information retrieval system that includes a client system and a remote server. The client system monitors television programming viewed by the user and compiles a user profile characterizing the television programming. When the user requests an Internet resource using the client system, the television programming information in the user profile is utilized to select an appropriate advertisement. The advertisement is then inserted in the information document and displayed to the user. Advertisement selection and insertion may be conducted at the remote server, the client system, or at the level of the Internet service provider. Such selection of advertisement increases the efficiency by which Internet advertisements are tailored to individuals. Instead of advertisements, information relating to the television programming may be retrieved over the Internet and displayed without direct user assistance.

IBM

Smart bookmarks Inventors: Jason R. McGee, Christopher C. Mitchell, Michael John Morton, and Brent A. Peters US Patent 7,051,117 Granted May 23, 2006 Filed: July 25, 2002

Abstract

A smart bookmark article of manufacture can include both a network address pointing to the network location of content specifying a form; and, one or more field references, each field reference corresponding to fields specified in the form. The smart bookmark article of manufacture also can include at least one field attribute corresponding to at least one of the field references.

Amazon

When someone performs a search, there are sometimes no results that satisfy that query. This can happen when the query terms are very detailed and narrow, or when one of the terms in the query is misspelled or misremembered. Instead of frustrating the searcher by not returning any responses at all, search engines will often display results based upon some of the terms that were in the query, instead of all of them.

The following patent notes that a common approach to displaying these results with less than all of the terms is to arbitrarily remove some of the terms from the query, until a number of results are returned. The aim of the process in this document is to provide a more effective technique for displaying items relating to some of the terms in the query.

Identifying items relevant to a current query based on items accessed in connection with similar queries Inventors: Dwayne Bowman, Greg Linden, Ruben E. Ortega, and Joel R. Spiegel US Patent 7,050,992 Granted May 23, 2006 Filed: June 25, 1999

Abstract

The present invention provides a software facility for identifying the items most relevant to a current query based on items selected in connection with similar queries. In preferred embodiments of the invention, the facility receives a query specifying one or more query terms. In response, the facility generates a query result identifying a plurality of items that satisfy the query. The facility then produces a ranking value for at least a portion of the item identified in the query result by combining the relative frequencies with which users selected that item from the query results generated from queries specifying each of the terms specified by the query. The facility identifies as most relevant those items having the highest ranking values.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 9:22 PM | Permalink

May 23, 2006

New Search Patent Applications: May 23, 2006 - Yahoo Wallets, Microsoft Answers, and Google Phrases

A number of patent applications published last week proved intriguing. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USTPO) filings offered us additions to Google phrase searching and predictive queries, some enhancements to interacting with ecommerce sites that appear to be from Yahoo, a Microsoft Answers system and a page location based bidding process, a link-based ranking system from Oracle, and "phone gestures" from V-Enable.

Google

Google Phrase searches could increase the size of the search engine's data base, and an addition to their predictive query suggestions process adds non alphabetical language, and descriptions of filters and meta information associated with suggested queries.

Anna Patterson, who developed one of the largest search engines ever created while at the Internet Archives, and author of the ACM Queue article Why Writing Your Own Search Engine is Hard, is the inventor listed on this patent application, which describes a way for a search engine to index an extremely large number of pages. A related, earlier patent application from her is Phrase-based searching in an information retrieval system.

Documents stored in the primary index described are ranked by relevance and include relevance related information associated with them. Documents in the secondary index are ranked by document number, and don't include relevance attributes. I wrote a little more about this patent application in a post at SEO by the Sea, entitled Google Aiming at 100 Billion Pages?

Multiple index based information retrieval system Inventor: Anna L. Patterson US Patent Application 20060106792 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on January 25, 2005

Abstract

An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases. The document index is partitioned into multiple indexes, including a primary index and a secondary index. The primary index stores phrase posting lists with relevance rank ordered documents. The secondary index stores excess documents from the posting lists in document order.

In addition to describing how predictive query suggestions, like those seen in Google Suggest, and on the Google Toolbar for Firefox could be adapted to work with languages like Japanese, this next patent application details some other aspects of how query terms are selected, and mentions meta information associated with those queries, and a number of different types of possible filters. Don't know if the filters described would be used in situations like one Barry mentioned recently: Belgian Company Suing Google Over Google Suggest Suggestions

Method and system for autocompletion for languages having ideographs and phonetic characters Inventor: Kevin A. Gibbs US Patent Application 20060106769 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on November 12, 2004

Abstract

A set of ordered predicted completion strings including strings of ideographs are presented to a user as the user enters text in a text entry box (e.g., a browser or a toolbar). The user entered text may include zero or more ideographs followed by one or more phonetic characters, or the entered text may be one or more. The predicted completion strings can be in the form of URLs or query strings. The ordering may be based on any number of factors (e.g., a query's frequency of submission from a community of users). URLs can be ranked based on an importance value of the URL. The sets of ordered predicted completion strings are obtained by matching a fingerprint value of the user's entry string to a fingerprint to table map which contains the set of ordered predicted completion strings. The generation of the ordered prediction strings takes into account multiple phonetic representations of certain strings of ideographs.

Yahoo?

There are three patent applications not in the USPTO assignment database, but which could be associated with Yahoo. One describes a way to automatically log in to different sites on the web. The other two discuss a "wallet" that may help visitors fill out checkout information on an ecommerce site.

While the published filings are not specifically assigned to Yahoo, a couple of the inventors listed on them have ties to the company. Thomas Joshua Shafron was one of the members of Log-Me-On.com, which was purchased by Yahoo in 1999, and Qi Lu (who is listed on all three) is presently Yahoo's Senior Vice President of Engineering for Search and Search Marketing.

Method and system of facilitating automatic login to a web site using an internet browser Inventors: Qi Lu and Ashish Baldua US Patent Application 20060107217 Published May 18, 2006 Filed December 30, 2005

Abstract

A method and system of adding functionality to an Internet browser interface. In one embodiment of the present invention, the added functionality may facilitate automatic login to a web site using an Internet browser. In another embodiment, the added functionality may enable the user to perform various tasks using the Internet browser such as, by way of non-limiting example, performing various tasks required to navigate one or more web pages, or to retrieve information desired by the user from one or more web pages or web sites.

These next two patent applications describe a toolbar addon and active x controls that could act as a ecommerce wallet, helping someone using a browser by filling out checkout information from different ecommerce sites. There are some subtle differences from one to the other, but much overlap, including the same abstract.

Method and system of facilitating on-line shopping using a downloadable toolbar Inventors: Thomas Joshua Shafron, Qi Lu, Ashish Baldua US Patent Application 20060106680 Published May 18, 2006 Filed December 30, 2005

Method and system of facilitating on-line shopping using a control object and a predetermined site Inventors: Thomas Joshua Shafron, Qi Lu, Ashish Baldua US Patent Application 20060106681 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on December 30, 2005

Abstract

A method of modifying an Internet browser interface to provide shopping assistant functionality facilitating on-line shopping at a supported merchant Internet site. A wallet created in accordance with the present invention comprises a database having various user data stored therein under certain predetermined field names. A supported merchant data file identifies a plurality of supported merchants and enables the modified browser interface to determine when a shopper has navigated to a supported merchant web site. For each supported merchant, a rules and mapping file is created that may be used in connection with the wallet to map user-provided information in the wallet to corresponding fields in the merchant's check-out web page. When a user navigates to a supported merchant web site and desires to purchase merchandise and/or services from that merchant, the wallet automatically fills out the merchant's check-out web page(s), thereby simplifying on-line shopping and particularly, the check-out process.

Microsoft

Microsoft published a patent application for a community based answering system, and another on a way of bidding on ads based upon their location on a page.

Computer-implemented system and method for providing authoritative answers to a general information search Inventor: Brady D. Forrest Assigned to Microsoft Corporation US Patent Application 20060106788 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on March 29, 2005

Abstract

A computer-implemented system and method provides authoritative answers, developed within a community-based question answering service to users of a general network information search. This community-based question answering service receives a question from a first user, and receives answers from community members regarding this question. The authority of the answer is then determined by members of the community and if the authority is of an acceptable level, the question together with its authoritative answer is added to a database which includes all authoritatively answered questions. The answering service has an interface that exposes the contents of this database to queries from users of the network who are not necessarily members of the answering service. In one embodiment, results from queries of the community-based database are integrated with queries of a second database of general network information. An improved general information search service is also provided that includes query results from the authoritative answers generated by the community-based answering service.

Systems and methods for determining relative placement of content items on a rendered page Inventors: Kevin A. Meek, David E. Heckerman, David M. Chickering, Brian Burdick, Li Li, Murali Vajjiravel, Ying Li, Rajeev Prasad, Raxit Kagalwala, Tarek Najm, and Sachin Dhawan Assigned to Microsoft Corporation US Patent Application 20060106710 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on November 30, 2004

Abstract

Systems and methods for determining the value of bids placed by content providers for placement positions on a page, e.g., a web page, rendered according to a given context, for instance, the search results listing for a particular query initiated on a search engine web site, are provided. Additionally, systems and methods are provided for determining placement of content items, e.g., advertisements and/or images, on a rendered page relative to other content items on the page based upon bid value.

Oracle

Oracle describes a "linguistically aware link analysis where link values incorporate content-based relevance values of associated pages as a function of the page link structure." By doing so, the odds that someone would follow one link over another upon a page would be different for each link, unlike some other link based ranking systems.

Linguistically aware link analysis method and system Inventors: Shamim A. Alpha Assigned to Oracle US Patent Application 20060106784 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on December 22, 2005

Abstract

Example, systems, methods, computer media, and other embodiments for determining relevance rankings for pages identified in a search query is provided. In one example, a computer program product can be configured to identify a candidate set of pages in response to a search query. A content-based relevance rank can be determined for at least one page of the candidate set of pages based on a content of the at least one page. The content-based relevance rank can be adjusted for one or more selected pages from the candidate set of pages by distributing a relevance rank from one or more pages that point to the one or more selected pages.

V-Enable

If you've used the Opera browser, you may be familiar with their mouse gestures, which can be used to navigate on, and to pages. Imagine something similar, but with gestures made with your wireless phone or PDA in hand. In this patent application, mobile Speech Search developer V-Enable describes a new method of navigation through the web using the motion of a wireless device.

Intelligent multimodal navigation techniques using motion of a mobile device sensed by a motion sensing device associated with the mobile device Inventors: Sunil Kumar, Subramanya R. Uppala, Dipanshu Sharma, Chandra Kholia, and Fernando Corona US Patent Application 20060107213 Published May 18, 2006 Filed on August 17, 2005

Abstract

Motion is used as an input to a program running on a mobile device. The mobile device may require input also from alphanumeric or text input device. The motion can be used for items such as selection from a list, or navigation on the map. The motion can be sensed on image processing the output of the camera, or can be directly determine using an accelerometer. Existing programs can be explicitly modified, in which case the program accepts the motion directly. Alternatively, the modification can be implicit--where the motion is converted to a signal that the program can accept, without modification.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 5:53 PM | Permalink

May 18, 2006

New Search Patents: May 18, 2006 - Yahoo's Active Abstracts are Calling

Some new patents and patent applications from the last week cover a wide range of search related topics. On Tuesday, I wrote about some possible enhancements to Ask's Binoculars. Yahoo seems to be looking at providing more information on search results pages with smarter snippets, or what they call "active abstracts" that can lead to such things as refined queries or maps or can even allow you to place a phone call. Microsoft comes up with an intermediary query interface which could be used with more than one search engine. IBM and Hitachi both present different ways of looking at clustered results after a search. The dominant Korean search engine describes methods for selling keyword-based advertising. S.L.I. Systems presents a human powered search, which uses community to tell it when to update pages, and which keywords to associate with those pages.

Yahoo

The first patent application I have listed for Yahoo is under their name in the US Patent and Trademark assignment database. The second isn't there yet, but it shares two authors, and is on a very related topic. They both cover very similar ground.

When a snippet, or abstract, is returned with a search result, it may be helpful to include a link in the snippet which might lead to something the searcher would want to see based upon the initial query. The search engine would try to include relevant "terms of interest" in the abstract.

These "terms of interest" could be single words, or a string of words. Some examples:

Yahoo defined keywords and categories,

Names - proper names, business names, organization names, place names, etc.,

Uncommon words,

Product names,

Trademarks,

Service marks,

Titles - music titles, book titles, titles of television shows, etc.,

Street addresses,

Telephone numbers, and;

Others.

These are all words or phrases likely to be used in a secondary search for information. These are called "active" terms in that they may be tied to some different actions, such as being links leading to other pages, or to Yahoo's mapping server, or a dictionary lookup, or a "voice over IP" call for a phone number, and so on.

The second patent application builds upon these active abstracts by providing additional ways that they can be used and activated. This can include translation, showing links to the most popular pages of a site, leading to reviews of products or services offered on the page, or even some results based upon information that the search engine might know about the searcher.

Search system presenting active abstracts including linked terms Inventors: Chad Carson, and Douglas Michael Cook US Patent Application 20060101012 Published May 11, 2006 Filed: June 10, 2005

Abstract

Upon receiving a search query, a search to identify at least one resource relevant to the search query is performed. At least one excerpt is extracted from the at least one resource, and a term of interest is identified in the excerpt. A link to a referral document is associated with the term of interest. Upon selection of the link, the referral document is displayed. Alternatively, the link is associated with a second search query, and the second search query is automatically performed upon selection of the link. A network telephone call can be automatically placed when a telephone number is the term of interest.

Active abstracts Inventors: Chad Carson, Douglas M. Cook, and Kalpana Ravinarayanan US Patent Application 20060101003 Published May 11, 2006 Filed: June 28, 2005

Abstract

Techniques are provided for generating search results that include, instead of or in addition to the traditional abstract links, other links to content that the user of a search engine may consider helpful. These other links are referred to herein as "non-traditional abstract links". In general, the search engine generates non-traditional abstract links that attempt to anticipate the "next move" by the search engine user. By selecting a non-traditional abstract link from the abstract of a matching resource, the user is able to navigate from the search result listing directly to locations other than the top of a matching resource.

Microsoft

Microsoft's patent application focuses on providing more efficient searches, by first putting a query into a structured form before looking to a document index at a search engine or cache files logs on that search engine or the user's browser. This process can involve the use of more than one search engine.

Application programming interface for text mining and search Inventors: Eric Brill and Robert J. Ragno US Patent Application 20060101037 Published May 11, 2006 Filed July 1, 2005

Abstract

Systems and methods are described that allow programmatic access to search engine results and query logs in a structured form. The search results can be retrieved from the search engine in an intermediary form that contains the information that is in the HTML pages provided to web browsers (potentially with additional information). This intermediary form can then be broken down on the client machine, using local resources, to assemble the structured objects. The library also provides for caching of the search results. This can be provided both on the local machine and on a remote database. When the results for a query exist in the caches, they can be retrieved from such location instead of querying the search engine. Documents and/or web pages can also be cached. The library can also be directed to operate only from the cache, effectively exposing a local data set instead of the remote search engine.

IBM

Method for organizing a plurality of documents and apparatus for displaying a plurality of documents Inventors: Zhong Su, Li Zhang, Yue Pan, Li Bai, Li Ping Yang US Patent Application 20060101102 Published May 11, 2006 Filed November 7, 2005

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for organizing a plurality of documents and an apparatus for displaying a plurality of documents. Said plurality of documents are clustered, and the resulted clusters of different levels are displayed as virtual directories, thus helping the user to navigate to the target document quickly. The navigation may be performed with the aid of topics and abstracts. Furthermore, the user's operations may be reduced through controlling the displayed contents to be within the size of the screen.

Hitachi

With some clustering search engines, the categories created are displayed in a list of folders or a vitual directory that you can only drill deeper into one at a time. This patent shows the results of a search, in clusters, arranged on a grid so that users can see their relevance to the term or terms that were searched for. The images attached to the patent are pretty illustrative of how it would work.

Document information display system and method, and document search method Inventors: Osamu Imaichi, Tetsuo Nishikawa, Toru Hisamitsu, Makoto Iwayama, Masakazu Fujio US Patent 7,047,255 Granted May 16, 2006 Filed February 27, 2003

Abstract

The present invention visualizes the contents of a plurality of documents without a lack of the listing property. Two document units are extracted from a document database and relevance degrees between individual elements of a group of the document units are calculated. The results are displayed on a two-dimensional coordinate plane depending on the relevance degree.

NHN Corporation

The Korean search space tends to be strongly dominated by Korean search engines, as can be seen from an article in the Korea Times back in January, which discussed Why is Google Struggling in Korea. It points to the NHN Corporation's Naver as the dominant search engine. This patent application looks at some steps that may be taken by NHN Corporation involving advertising based upon keywords.

Method for generating a search result list on a web search engine Inventors: Joon Hong, Woo Sung US Patent Application 20060100988 Published May 11, 2006 Filed: February 27, 2004

Abstract

A Computer-readable recording medium in which a program for implementing a method according to any one of claims 1 to 12 is recorded. The present invention relates to a method for selling a search word to a network information provider and providing a search result list to a searcher based on the sales information if the searcher inputs the search word in an Internet search engine. The present invention includes maintaining a database for storing a plurality of search listings therein, each of the search listings including a search word and a network position associated with a network information provider, receiving the search request from the searcher, identifying a search listing having a search word corresponding to the search request, providing the identified search listing to the searcher as a search result list, if the searcher clicks a search listing of the search result list and accesses a network information provider's web page associated with the clicked search listing, receiving predetermined information on the use of the web page by the searcher, and charging the network information provider based on the received predetermined information on the use of the web page by the searcher. According to the present invention, there is provided an Internet search service method and apparatus for providing a variety of billing means to a network information provider by properly reflecting the profit made by the network information provider.

S.L.I. Systems, Inc

The intent behind this patent application is to create a unique search engine and "ameliorate the aforementioned disadvantages of conventional search engines by harnessing the cerebral power of the human operator." Pages selected in search results by users are the pages that get updated in search results. The more frequently a page is selected, the more frequently the information in the database about it gets updated. Users can also supply their own keywords to describe the content of a site, which can then be shared with others.

S.L.I. Systems is the founder and a co-owner of Eurekster, which Danny wrote about a couple of years ago in Eurekster Launches Personalized Social Search. This document appears to describe many of the features of Eurekster's swickis.

Search engine Inventors: Grant James Ryan, Shaun William Ryan, Craig Matthew Ryan, Wayne Alistar Munro, and Del Robinson US Patent Application 20060100956 Published May 11, 2006 Filed: December 21, 2005

Abstract

The present invention provides for a method of updating an internet search engine database with the results of a user's selection of specific web page listings from the general web page listing provided to the user as a result of his initial keyword search entry. By updating the database with the selections of many different users, the database can be updated to prioritize those web listings that have been selected the most with respect to a given keyword, and thereby presenting first the most popular web page listings in a subsequent search using the same keyword search entry.

Update

The CEO of SLI Systems, Shaun Ryan, sent me a friendly note correcting a couple of my statements about the relationship between SLI Systems and Eurekster. While they are a founder, they own a piece of Eurekster, and not the whole company. Thanks, Shaun.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 5:53 PM | Permalink

May 16, 2006

Ask Binoculars Improving Search Results?

On its surface, the Binoculars feature in search results at Ask.com seems to only provide a preview of a page that you can visit. But, there may be more going on beneath the surface than a simple preview. There are attributes of this preview that may not have been rolled out yet, and the way that people interact with Binoculars might help the search engine improve their search results. A patent granted today for Ask.com has more details.

The Ask.com patent, Methods and apparatus for mouse-over preview of contextually relevant information (US Patent 7,047,502), appears to describe their Binoculars feature, and some interesting alternatives that it could display in addition to a preview of a page.

Information that could be displayed in a preview window

On search results pages at Ask.com, the Binoculars let searchers sneak a look at a screenshot of a page they could visit, when they mouse over a preview icon. The patent document spells out some other options. These alternatives might be shown in a single window, or even in cascading or adjacent windows.

Examples include:

Other web pages that have relevant and similar content,
A list of URLs representing all or some of the links contained or identified in the page,
A view of the home page associated with the web page returned, or other pages within the same domain,
A view of the page on the domain with the most click throughs to it,
The creation date of a web page,
The last refresh date of a web page,
The file size of a web page,
The number of links-in on a web page,
The number of links-out on a web page,
Registration information associated with the domain,
Geographic information relevant to the site,
A directory structure of deeper pages leading from the page returned,
Query refinement suggestions, such as alternative search terms with a list of sites received in response to that query,
A language translation of a page,
A definition, or a list of synonyms or antonyms, and;
Part of the page where the queried terms are located.

The patent document also discusses how the preview window might be configured; what preview icons might look like; and how previews might be displayed, including inline windows, floating windows, and multiple windows per result.

User Behavior and Binoculars

We know that Ask.com is no stranger to the click through methods that were used by Direct Hit in an attempt to improve query results. Can the use of previews also allow them to glean information about how users respond to the pages that are returned in a query?

The preview information is intended to provide users with a way to effectively gauge search results before they click through to a page. Tracking how people use those features might help the search engine. It's noted that this could be done by monitoring keystrokes, mousing, and related timing for a user reviewing a search results page. This information might be collected in query logs or host log files of the search engine. This is the kind of information that might be measured:

Which result is being previewed by order or rank,
The length of each preview,
The order of previewing,
The number of results previewed per page, and;
Whether there is a click-through.

What conclusions might be drawn from this collected information?

A long preview time might indicate that a result is fairly relevant to a query and may increase the relevance ranking for a page in relation to that query. A very short preview may indicate the opposite.

The number or percentage of previews for each results page could tell the search engine how easy it was for the user to find an acceptable document. So a small number of previews before a click through might indicate that it was easy to find an acceptable result. If the searcher looked at all of the previews on a page, but didn't visit any of them until looking at most or all of the results, then an assumption might be made that he or she "settled after looking for a while."

The rank of a previewed site may be relevant in that a preview indicates user interest. Therefore, if the original rank was low, but a site receives a good percentage of previews and click throughs, there may be cause for improving its ranking.

The order of previews may also provide a clue as to which results were relevant to a particular query.

It's also noted in the patent that the methods described here to improve query results might also be used in conjunction with some of the processes described in Ask.com's patent on Personalized search methods (U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,068)

I'll be looking at those Binoculars a little differently now that I've read this patent.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Ask.com area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 4:07 PM | Permalink

May 10, 2006

Yahoo Tests Livesearch On AllTheWeb; Google Patent Problem, Perhaps?

Yahoo's AllTheWeb service is sporting a new Livesearch feature. It's pretty interesting. As you type into the search box, search results automatically start appearing. And more interesting, it's similar to something Google's already sought to patent.

Let's dive into the Livesearch system first. Say you are looking for information about HD TVs. You type h, and a list of suggested searches appears to the left of the main search results area, including:

h
hotmail
home depot
hi5...

In the search results, you start seeing listings for hotmail, second on the list. That's the term AllTheWeb is guessing you might be after. Ah -- but we're not after hotmail! That's OK. As soon as you enter another letter, making hd, you get:

hd
hdtv
hd dvd
henry draper star catalogue
hdfc bank...

In the search results, hdtv is automatically selected as your search query, giving you results on that topic.

It'll be fun to see if this takes off more if it moves to regular Yahoo. Potentially, it will speed up searching, giving you answers faster than you've even completed typing in your search terms.

Certainly it's nice to see the query refinement given better play than on Yahoo, making it easier for people to understand there are alternatives and related terms to their queries. Query refinement has long felt neglected, as I've covered more in my Robert Scoble Wants What We Had -- Better Query Refinement. So Do I! and More On Query Refinement, The Human Scale Problem & Creating The Search Dialog posts last year.

Yahoo explains a bit more about Livesearch in its blog post, Livesearch on AlltheWeb, plus they give some feedback options there. Meanwhile, a revisit to some things that Livesearch is similar to:

SurfWax LookAhead: SurfWax has offered its tool since at least 2003, where it suggests related searches (but not actual results) based on the content in a web site or from a controlled vocabulary. Surfwax's SurfWax News service is an excellent place to see it in action, where suggestions change as you type in the search box. You can also try WikiWax, which gives you suggestions for searching against Wikipedia. Gary Price explained more about both services in this September 2005 SearchDay article: Surfwax Offers Look-Ahead Technology for Web Sites. Gary's also just put LookAhead technology into his DocuTicker site.
AOL Pinpoint Shopping: Start entering a query and watch how suggestions start to appear below the search box. Pinpoint's been doing this since September 2004. AOL's main search site sort of offers a similar thing with its Smartbox service rolled out last January, but looking today, it doesn't seem to work nearly as well as the Pinpoint service or some of the other services above, giving me mainly company info suggestions, if anything at all.
Google Suggest: It also doesn't give you answers automatically, but it does suggest related terms as you type. It's not built into regular Google (still -- it launched at the end of 2004!), but it was added to the Google Toolbar last September and to Google News earlier this month.
Snap.com: You can't see it now, since Snap's currently down with a "come back and see the new Snap on May 15th" message. But it did offer a dynamic suggestion tool last April that probably will return.
Ask Zoom: It's not a dynamic suggestion tool, in that you won't see things appear as you type. But it probably is the most sophisticated or substantial query refinement feature any major search engine offers. Enter a query, then on the results, you can use the Narrow Your Search or Expand Your Search sections to access related queries. Introduced under the Zoom name in May 2005.
Become.com: Start entering a query, and like Google Suggest, it suggests searches right below the search box. Debuted in June 2005.
Yahoo Instant Search: Like Livesearch, enter a query and see a result appear -- but only one. Debuted in September 2005.
Answers.com: Same as Become.com -- entering a query and get suggested searches below the search box. Debuted in December 2005.

Just to stress, none of the services above goes the extra step of actually showing results automatically, in addition to suggested search terms, as Livesearch does. I do feel like I've seen someone do this combo move before, but I can't think of any offhand or after doing some searching. Those closest thing is how Google will prefetch the first result in a listed for a query for those using Firefox, as a means of speeding up access to pages. But that's a different concept altogether.

Closer to the mark, Bill Slawski's very detailed Can Google Read Your Mind? Processing Predictive Queries article talks about a Google patent application on a system that seems very close to what Yahoo's Livesearch is doing. Bill might pop in here to postscript some thoughts on how this applies to what Yahoo's doing.

Certainly Livesearch demonstrates one thing -- how quickly search engines can generate results, or more correctly, how many results they already have cached and ready to serve up without having to "hit disk" to actually do a search.

In other words, when so many people are constantly searching for things like "hdtv," search engines don't have to always go back and search through billions of pages for the results. They can simply pull up the same results they already served recently from fast memory, a long-standing practice for being speedy.

It's also nice to see AllTheWeb finally used for something again, I suppose. Back when Overture bought it, it was positioned as sort of a alpha testing platform with AltaVista a more consumer friendly beta site. Then Yahoo bought Overture, pretty much throwing both AllTheWeb and AltaVista into abandonment.

Postscript

I do see a number of similarities between Live Search and Google Suggest, but there are differences, too. I'm excited to see AllTheWeb being used in this manner.

I did look back at some of the Yahoo! patents and patent applications to see if I could find something similar to what Yahoo! is doing in this Livesearch. I did come up with something close in a patent application that is part of a larger set of refinements to a search user interface in Universal search interface systems and methods. There, we're told that:

The present invention provides highly sophisticated query completion features. As a user types, related words and units are shown (could appear in a drop-down box). These could be based on related searches but personalized to an individual user. For example, when user types in "sf", a drop-box showing weather, hotels, restaurants, etc. may be shown based, in part, on what this user has searched for in the past about "sf".

This patent application was filed April 5, 2004 and published December 9, 2004, earlier than Google's Anticipated query generation and processing in a search engine. But it covers a wider range of enhancements to a search interface. It will be interesting if some of the other concepts discussed in the Yahoo! patent application make their way into livesearch. -- Bill Slawski

Postscript 2 From Danny: I did ask Yahoo about the patent issue, but they said they couldn't comment on legal issues.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo Powered Livesearch on AlltheWeb.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:55 AM | Permalink

May 8, 2006

Does Google Use Whois Information?

Can whois information be used by a search engine to rank web pages? Is Google using whois information in their ranking of web pages? Some research on a recent trilogy of Go Daddy patent applications raised those questions in my mind.

The patent filings involve adding additional reputation information to published whois data, and letting others use the information for a number of reasons, including letting search engines incorporate that reputation information into their ranking mechanisms.

This seemed in line with something that Google discussed doing last year in Information retrieval based on historical data. But, is it something that either company can do? Is it a use consistent with the way that whois information is supposed to be used? There's the rub.

A recent task force vote from the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) recommended a limited use of whois information and a definition of the the purpose of Whois. The purpose that they came up with doesn't seem to go well with a commercial search engine using the information as part of their ranking algorithm. Their definition was agreed to by the GNSO, at a vote by teleconference on April 12th. Here's the definition of whois information they decided upon:

The purpose of the gTLD Whois service is to provide information sufficient to contact a responsible party for a particular gTLD domain name who can resolve, or reliably pass on data to a party who can resolve, issues related to the configuration of the records associated with the domain name within a DNS nameserver."

What this means is that less whois information, rather than more, will be published and available to the public.

The Go Daddy patent applications were originally filed on October 29, 2004.

Presenting search engine results based on domain name related reputation (US Patent Application 20060095404) Publishing domain name related reputation in whois records (US Patent Application 20060095459) Tracking domain name related reputation (US Patent Application 20060095586)

The Google patent application was published on March 31, 2005. Here are some of the uses of domain name information that it suggests could be used by Google:

Domain registration could be used as a way to determine the "document inception date," or an age associated with a page.

The expiration date of a domain could indicate the "legitimacy" of a document, with short term registrations indicating more questionable pages.

Changes, and the frequency of changes, in registration information, including contact information, hosting companies, and more, could also raise warning flags.

Information about name servers, and other sites on those name servers could also play a role in a ranking score:
A "good" name server may have a mix of different domains from different registrars and have a history of hosting those domains, while a "bad" name server might host mainly pornography or doorway domains, domains with commercial words (a common indicator of spam), or primarily bulk domains from a single registrar, or might be brand new.

Does Google use this type of information? Some signs point to that, as noted in this Search Engine Watch Forums thread: Does New Google Patent Validate Sandbox Theory?. A Search Engine Roundtable post also describes an interest in using that information: Google Admits to Improve Search Quality with Registrar Data. Both hint at reasons why Google became a domain name registrar beyond registering domain names.

If they are using whois information, will this vote from ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization force their use to change? Tough question to answer.

There's an interesting piece of information hidden away in the real-time captioning of the minutes of the ICANN Meetings in Wellington, New Zealand on March 29th, which discusses the reasons for this change, and some of the implications of it, such as the removal of the name and contact information of the owner of a domain from whois information in what will be available to the public.

Near the end of the teleconference, there's a discussion, and an unconfirmed report, that Jordyn Buchanan, who has been the chair of the WHOIS task force would be leaving his present employer to work with another former chair head from ICANN, Vint Cerf.

Vint Cerf is presently the Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Google Web Search area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 11:52 PM | Permalink

May 4, 2006

In Yahoo We Trust - The Link Spam Patent Application

A new Yahoo patent application published today builds upon a method for finding reputable pages on the web to reduce web spam when ranking web pages to present as search results.

When Combating Web Spam with TrustRank was published back in August of 2004, it caused somewhat of a stir, coming up with a way to find reputable web pages based upon a couple of simple concepts:

"Good sites seldom point to bad ones."
"The care with which people add links to their pages is often inversely proportional to the number of links on the page."

While the trustrank paper describes a process for finding good pages, it doesn't take the next step, and explain how it could be used to help rank search results. In the conclusion to the paper we are told that:

In a search engine, TrustRank can be used either separately to filter the index, or in combination with PageRank and other metrics to rank search results

The details of how that would happen weren't included. Today, we're given a glimpse at one possible approach.

Yahoo's patent application, Link-based spam detection, describes a way of sorting spam pages out of search results, in combination with pagerank. It presents a largely automated method for separating reputable pages from spam pages, with a little help from people manually identifying reputable seed pages.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Yahoo Web Search area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 6:27 AM | Permalink

May 3, 2006

New Search Patents: May 3, 2006 - Microsoft and IBM Dominate with Recent Search Filings

With Google quiet, a recent flurry of activity burst out at the US Patent and Trademark Office from Microsoft and IBM, including the granting of a patent on a music search engine, another on searching recorded voice, and patents (and patent applications) on the ranking and presentation of results and on refinements of queries.

The strong showing from the two companies is joined by a Yahoo patent on pay-for-placement bidding, a Doubleclick patent on media ads, a patent application from Harris Corporation on reranking results based upon vocabulary words, patent applications from Yahoo and A9 adding functionality to handheld devices, Copernic trying to claim a process for real time indexing on desktops, and Telstra patenting a clustering and machine learning search system.

Yahoo

Yahoo was granted a patent on pay-for-placement bidding under the Overture name and also published a patent application on sharing data, such as driving directions, from a computer to a handheld device.

System and method for enabling multi-element bidding for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine US Patent 7,035,812, assigned to Overture, invented by Ted Meisel, Peter Savich, Thomas A. Soulanille (Granted April 25, 2006, Filed on February 1, 2002)

Abstract

In a system and method for enabling information providers to influence a position for a search listing within a search result list, a database stores accounts for the network information providers. Each account contains contact and billing information for a network information provider. In addition, each account contains at least one search listing having at least three components: a description, a search term comprising one or more keywords, and a bid amount. The network information provider may add, delete, or modify a search listing after authenticated login. A bidding process occurs when the network information provider enters a new bid amount for a search listing. The system and method then compares the bid amount with all other bid amounts for the same search term, and generates a rank value for all search listings having that search term to determine where the listing will appear on the search results list page.

Method for providing a clip for viewing at a remote device US Patent Application 20060085731, assigned to Yahoo, invented by Yingqing L. Cui, Min Zhou, and Zhaowei Jiang (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on September 28, 2004)

Abstract

A method and apparatus is directed to provide a clip of content to a remote device, such as a mobile device. The invention enables an end-user to determine content from a networked device, such as a personal computer. The determined content may include content from a webpage, graphic image, audio file, file, and the like. The determined content may be selected using a clip mechanism within a browser, or other application. The clip mechanism may provide a pop-up window, field entry, or the like, that enables entry of an identifier associated with the remote device. The clipped content may then be formatted based on a configuration of the remote device. The formatted clipped content may be transmitted to the remote device using a variety of messaging mechanisms, such as a SMS message, which includes a Universal Resource Locator (URL) to the clipped content.

A9.com

A9 claimed a way to display images, such as destinations, to mobile devices in response to the location of those devices - useful when you are following directions and want to see your stopping point as you approach it.

System and method for displaying location-specific images on a mobile device US Patent Application 20060089792, assigned to A9.com, Inc.invented by Udi Manber, Barnaby M. Dorfman, and Jonathan A. Gold (Published April 27, 2006, Filed on October 25, 2004)

Abstract

A system is provided for providing location-specific images to a mobile device for display. The system generally comprises three components: a mobile device having a screen, a position identification system (e.g., a GPS receiver) that determines the position of the mobile device, and a database containing location-specific images taken at various locations. Each location-specific image is associated with geographic coordinates of the location at which the image was taken. Based on the position of the mobile device as determined by the position identification system, a location-specific image is selected from the database and displayed on the screen of the mobile device. For example, when a user is using the mobile device as a car navigation system, a location-specific image of the user's destination location can be selected and displayed when the determined position of the mobile device comes within a certain distance from the geographic coordinates of the destination location.

IBM

IBM has a handful of new filings at the USTPO, including; a way to search recorded speech, a method to predict search result quality in response to different queries, an icon based user interface allowing searchers to choose amongst categories of search results, and an identification system to see previously visited pages in search results that may not have merited bookmarking earlier.

Method and system for searching recorded speech and retrieving relevant segments US Patent 7,039,585, assigned to IBM, invented by Gerald Johann Wilmot and Robert Kern (Granted May 2, 2006, Filed on September 24, 2001)

Abstract

A system and method for searching recorded speech is disclosed. The system and method comprises converting the recorded speech into text using a voice recognition system. As the speech is being converted, naturally occurring breaks in the languages will be used to take time indexes from the recording. The system and method includes creating a full text index of the recorded speech utilizing an information extender. The full text index contains a plurality of time stamps that point to the occurrence of words in the recorded speech. Finally, the text is searched by a full text search server that has linguistic search capabilities using the full text index. Finally, the searched text, the text index and the recorded speech are stored in the database. The recorded speech is searched by locating relevant phrases or words, and then mapping the time stamps associated with the relevant phrases words back to the recorded speech in the database.

Prediction of query difficulty for a generic search engine US Patent Application 20060085399, assigned to IBM, invented by David Carmel, Lawrence Adam Darlow, Shai Fine, and Elad Yom-Tov (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on October 19, 2004)

Abstract

A query difficulty prediction unit includes a query difficulty predictor to determine the extent of overlap between query documents received from a search engine operating on an input query and sub-query documents received from the search engine operating on sub-queries of the input query. The unit generates a query difficulty prediction from the extent of overlap.

Dynamic search criteria on a search graph US Patent Application 20060085395, assigned to IBM, invented by Connie M. Cradick, Ryan Kirk Cradick, Zachary Adam Garbow, and Emuejevoke Jane-Frances Sanomi-Fleming (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on October 14, 2004)

Abstract

A method, apparatus, system, and signal-bearing medium that, in an embodiment, display icons representing search terms on a search graph, having at least one axis. The axis represents a search criteria. The position of the icon specifies a value (such as an importance or weight) of the search criteria. A search engine uses the search terms, the search criteria, and the value to conduct the search. The results of the search are displayed in a results pane, and the search results are updated as the positions of the icons on the search graph change. The search criteria associated with the axes of the search graph may also change. In this way, the user interface for the search is made easier for the user to control.

Method and System to Identify a Previously Visited Universal Resource Located (URL) in Results from a Search US Patent Application 20060085476, assigned to IBM, invented by Fonda J. Daniels, Timothy E. Figgins, and David B. Kumhyr (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on October 15, 2004)

Abstract

A method to identify a previously visited URL in results from a search may include loading a URL personal databook collection object. The method may also include identifying any matches between results from the search and any URL object references in the URL personal databook collection object.

Microsoft

As I noted above, Microsoft has been keeping the patent office busy, with a number of new documents involving the web and search. One involves a quick way to change the scoring criteria used to rank sites, or classes of sites, for presentation in search results. Another allows for tracking and storing information about visits by a browser across different content sites.

Microsoft has also developed a music search engine based upon the characteristics of the compositions themselves instead of subjective descriptions of the songs and collaborative filtering (i.e., listeners who bought this album also purchased...). Another patent enables searching of data from partner sites via a main search interface. An improved method of providing thumbnails of web pages for users of handheld is the focus of another granted filing.

A different one looks to serving ads and other location based content, based not only upon the location of searchers, but also on the intended location of their searches. Query refinements are described in another, which uses metadata about documents initially returned on a search to try to interpret the intent of a query and provide relevant results.

The last Microsoft patent application listed involves a browser enhancement to aid in navigation through web pages, based upon predictions of where a visitor might want to go next. (I guess helping to answer the old Microsoft question, "Where do you want to go today?")

System and method for providing search results with configurable scoring formula US Patent 7,039,631, assigned to Microsoft, invented by James Charles Finger, II (Granted May 2, 2006, Filed on May 24, 2002)

Abstract

A system and method for scoring documents in a search, wherein the scoring algorithm may be reconfigured dynamically. When a query is submitted, a score data structure is created for each document to be scored, which contains fields of information about how a given document compares to a query. A ranker object embodies a formula that derives a scalar score from the information contained in a score data structure. Scoring software is configured to apply the formula embodied in a ranker object to the values in the score data structure. Thus, the scoring formula can be dynamically changed without recompiling the scoring software by providing a new ranker object. Preferably, ranker objects are organized into rank sets, where each rank set contains a different ranker object for each class of document to be scored.

Tracking usage behavior in computer systems US Patent 7,039,699, assigned to Microsoft, invented by Attila Narin, Keith A. Kegley, and David A. Sobeski (Granted May 2, 2006, Filed on May 2, 2000)

Abstract

A system and process for tracking users' usage of content in computer systems. The tracking and accumulation of content usage information allows content providers to understand more about their user base. In a computer system having numerous users, it is advantageous to provide relevant customized content in addition to any specifically requested content. By storing and processing content usage information for users in a computer system, customized content may be provided to a user based on the user's previous usage of similar content. In operation, a computer system hosting various content creates a unique identifier, having data storage space, for a given user of the computer system. When a user sends a request for content to the computer system, a unique identifier is created and/or updated with information relevant to a user's content request. The identifier is passed back to the user with the specifically desired content. When processing subsequent requests for content, the computer system updates the unique identifier with most recent usage information. In addition, the computer system processes the unique identifier for previous usage information in an effort to provide customized relevant content, in addition to the specifically desired content.

System and methods for providing adaptive media property classification US Patent 7,035,873, assigned to Microsoft, invented by Christopher B. Weare (Granted April 25, 2006, Filed on August 20, 2001)

Abstract

A system and methods are provided for automatically classifying data according to perceptual properties of the data to form a classification chain that is suited to the searching and sorting of large databases of media entities. During classification, experts assign each media entity in the training data set to one or more classes, with each class corresponding to a given subset of perceptual properties of the data. In conjunction with digital signal processing properties of the data corresponding to the perceptual properties, the classified data is then used to construct an initial classification chain. During operation, when presented with an unclassified entry, the classification chain returns an estimate of the class of the entry, as well as a confidence measure that is proportional to the level of confidence of the class assignment. Over time, as the classification chain evolves, the classification chain becomes more and more effective for quickly characterizing media entities.

Generic proxy for representing search engine partner US Patent 7,035,845, assigned to Microsoft, invented by Steven Yao, Eric Watson, Saurab Nog, and David Snelling (Granted April 25, 2006, Filed on May 15, 2002)

Abstract

A search engine receives a search query from a user and forwards the received query to a partner by way of a call to a generic proxy with the query for the partner. The generic proxy receives and processes the query, forwards the processed query to the partner, receives search results responsive to the forwarded query from the partner, and processes the received search results, all according to the configuration information corresponding to the partner. The generic proxy then forwards the processed search results to the search engine for further forwarding to the querying user. Accordingly, each of several partners has corresponding configuration information unique thereto and only the generic proxy need be developed for all of the several partners.

Semantic thumbnails US Patent Application 20060085743, assigned to Microsoft, invented by Patrick Markus Baudisch and Heidi Lap Mun Lam (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on October 18, 2004)

Abstract

A method is provided for displaying a page formed of discrete elements, such as a Web page, on different computing devices. The method converts the page into a semantic thumbnail, which preserves the overall appearance of the page and displays readable text segments that enable a user to identify main areas of the page. The semantic thumbnail is adaptable to different screen sizes and target font sizes. The method enlarges unreadable text segments in a miniature version of the page. The method also trims the enlarged text segments to fit the width of the semantic thumbnail by summarizing or cropping text in the enlarged text segments.

System and method for automatic generation of search results based on local intention US Patent Application 20060085392, assigned to Microsoft, invented by Lee Wang and Ying Li (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on September 30, 2004)

Abstract

A system and related techniques automatically analyze Web search and other activity, to generate locality-selected results based on not just the user's location, but also the business or other content provider's location and the degree of local intent in the user's query. The locality or region to the user may be identified, for instance, by the presence of geographic clues or indicators in the general content of the Web site, for instance, the presence of ZIP codes, telephone numbers, town names or other semantic or other indicators which have some geographic connotation in search terms, key words or other query or semantic inputs. The user's degree of local intent may be automatically analyzed as well, for instance by the presence of terms such as "car repair" or "pizza restaurant" which may suggest the user intends to locate local goods, services or providers. The search service may then access a content database to identify ads or other media or content which match or correspond to the detected locality or region, such as ads for local restaurants, car dealerships, physicians or other services or products, and which correspond in location, working radius and degree of localness to the user's query. Because the delivery of localized search results according to the invention is specifically filtered for user-driven local intent, advertisements and other media or content may be delivered which better match the user's search objectives.

Automatic query suggestions US Patent Application 20060085391, assigned to Microsoft, invented by Andrzej Turski, Lili Cheng, and Matthew B. MacLaurin (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on September 24, 2004)

Abstract

An improved technique of querying a data store by widening the query using a series of queries that follow relations between items. Initial auxiliary queries are used to find metadata property values (rather than the actual items) that are then used in the subsequent queries. The initial queries employ one or more property values to find a related item. In response thereto, an action menu is presented for the item that facilitates widening the search for all other items with the same selected property value. The user can be presented with several choices depending on which property is used for query widening.

Browsing web content using predictive navigation links US Patent Application 20060085766, assigned to Microsoft, invented by Ewa Dominowska and Robert J. Ragno (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on October 15, 2004)

Abstract

A predictive travel log system using one or more ranking schemes to predict the location that a user would seek to navigate to through back and forward navigation in a web browser is provided. The navigation functionality can be exposed through traditional back and forward buttons with drop down travel log menus found in a browser user interface.

Doubleclick

Doubleclick was awarded a patent on predicting, displaying, monitoring, and receiving feedback on direct advertisements, preferably banner ads on media sites.

Method and apparatus for automatic placement of advertising US Patent 7,039,599, Assigned to Doubleclick Inc., invented by Dwight A. Merriman and Kevin O'Connor (Granted May 2, 2006, Filed on June 15, 1998)

Abstract

A computer system for automatic replacement of direct advertisements in scarce media includes an advertising server for selecting a direct advertisement based on certain criteria. Transaction results of the direct advertisement placement are reported back to the advertising server, and an associated accounting system. In one embodiment, the direct advertiser's server reports transactions back to the advertising server by email. In a second embodiment, a direct proxy server brokers the user's session (or interaction) with the direct advertiser's server, including transaction processing and the direct proxy server reports the results of transactions back to the advertising server and its associated accounting system. A direct proxy provides an independent audit of transactions at a remote direct advertiser's web site. The feedback of the results of direct advertisement transactions provides an efficient utilization of direct advertising space by way of an automated computer system with a predictive model for selection and distribution of direct advertising.

Harris Corporation

Harris Corporation has patented a method of reranking search results by the occurence of relevant vocabulary words within the documents returned. Those relevant terms could be decided upon the the searcher or the computing system used.

Method for re-ranking documents retrieved from a document database US Patent Application 20060089926, assigned to Harris Corporation, invented by Margaret M. Knepper, Kevin Lee Fox, and Ophir Frieder (Published April 27, 2006, Filed on October 27, 2004)

Abstract

A computer-implemented method for processing documents in a document database includes generating an initial ranking of retrieved documents using an information retrieval system and based upon a user search query, and processing vocabulary words based upon occurrences thereof in at least some of the retrieved documents. Respective relevancies of the vocabulary words based on the occurrences thereof and the user search query are generated. A re-ranking of the retrieved documents is generated based on the relevancies of the vocabulary words.

Copernic Technologies

Copernic Technologies has claimed a method of desktop search which works with an operating system to identify which documents and which parts of a local index need to be updated, rather than reindexing all documents on a system.

Indexing systems and methods US Patent Application 20060085490, assigned to Copernic Technologies, Inc., invented by Mathieu Baron, Daniel Lavoie, and Nicholas Pelletier (Published April 20, 2006, Filed on August 19, 2005)

Abstract

Described herein are systems and methods for indexing documents in a quasi real-time manner. The method can include the steps of indexing documents and storing document information in a database, registering with an operating system for notification of changes to the documents, and responding to received notification of changes by updating the database to reflect the addition, modification, renaming and/or deletion of documents. Unlike traditional document systems, the document index described herein can be updated without rescanning all the indexed documents.

Telstra Corporation Limited

A patent was granted to a couple of employees of Telstra Corporation Limited, in Australia, which has a similar name and shares inventors and a filing date with an Australian patent filing assigned to the company. It describes a process of filtering and categorizing documents and the use of a support vector machine learning approach, for large quantities of text messages, emails, and web pages.

While there is no official assignment noted in the USPTO database, there is a patent application assigned to Telstra, filed on the same date as the application in the US, with the same inventors under the name "A document categorisation system" (Australian Application Number 2001291494)

Document categorisation system US Patent Application 20060089924, invented by Bhavani Raskutti and Adam Kowalczyk (Published on April 27, 2006, Filed on September 25, 2001)

Abstract

A document categorisation system, including a clusterer for generating clusters of related electronic documents based on features extracted from said documents, and a filter module for generating a filter on the basis of said clusters to categorise further documents received by said system. The system may include an editor for manually browsing and modifying the clusters. The categorisation of the documents is based on n-grams, which are used to determine significant features of the documents. The system includes a trend analyzer for determining trends of changing document categories over time, and for identifying novel clusters. The system may be implemented as a plug-in module for a spreadsheet application, providing a convenient means for one-off or ongoing analysis of text entries in a worksheet.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 6:56 PM | Permalink

April 19, 2006

New Search Patents: April 18, 2006 - Is That A Tricorder In Your Pocket?

There were 4251 patents granted on April 18, 2006. Following are five that looked like good candidates for my first post on search patents as SEW's new patents correspondent. They include a Yahoo patent on money exchanges; a Google patent on controlling access to documents based on URLs, another on personalizing results; Gateway's social tagging-like patent and a GeoVector's patent on a rudimentary tricorder-like device.

Before jumping into them, a couple of words about patents. Some of the processes and technology described in patents are created in house. Some are developed with the assistance of contractors and partners. Some are never developed in a tangible manner, but may serve as a way to attempt to exclude others from using the technology, or even to possibly mislead competitors into exploring an area that they might not have an interest in (sometimes skepticism is good.)

Google and Yahoo both were granted patents on this day, and perhaps the most interesting things about these particular patents is how they came to those companies. A couple of other patents from the USPTO came out on the morning of the 18th, and may play a role in the development of search and the web.

Yahoo

Back in March 2000, Yahoo fueled a firestorm with the acquisition of Arthas, which owned an ecommerce payment service operated under the name Dotbank. The patent issued to Yahoo, Systems and methods for implementing person-to-person money exchange, includes the name of the co-founder of Arthas amongst the inventors on the document. The Dotbank site closed shortly after the Yahoo purchase, and Yahoo Paydirect opened a few months later. The service never achieved the popularity of a PayPal, and was officially dead by 2004. Will it be resurrected with the granting of this patent? I'm a little skeptical.

Google

Infoseek launched their search service back in 1995, went public in 1996, and by 1997 they were being visited by over 7 million people a month. A patent application that they filed back in September of 1997, Document retrieval system with access control, was granted patent status today. Like many of the patents originally filed by Infoseek, this one now belongs to Google, after an assignment last October. The abstract:

An electonic document retrieval system and method for a collection of information distributed over a network having documents stored in web or document servers in which an access control list relates user identification to documents to which a user has access. No access control lists are contained in the documents themselves nor are comparisons made between lists of users, with their access levels, and the classifications of documents. Rather, by the use of URLs or pointers, it is possible to associate every document to which a user has access with the user identification number or code. URLs have a hierarchical format which allows partial URLs to indicate levels of access. HTTP protocol, FTP and CGI protocol employ URL calls for documents and can use the access control method and system of the present invention. When a search query is applied to a query server, a list of hits is returned, together with pertinent URLs. The query server consults each access control list associated with each document server, to present to the user only those URLs for which he has a proper access level. Other URLs for which the user does not have proper access are kept hidden from the user.

Outride, Inc., was a spinoff from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center specializing in personalization and search, and James E. Pitow was the president and the co-founder of the company. Hinrich Schuetze was the vice president of the of Outride. Google purchased the technology assets of Outride back in 2001. One of the original Outride patent applications, System and method for searching and recommending objects from a categorically organized information repository, invented by Pitow and Schuetze, was also granted patent status. The abstract:

A search and recommendation system employs the preferences and profiles of individual users and groups within a community of users, as well as information derived from categorically organized content pointers, to augment Internet searches, re-rank search results, and provide recommendations for objects based on an initial subject-matter query. The search and recommendation system operates in the context of a content pointer manager, which stores individual users' content pointers (some of which may be published or shared for group use) on a centralized content pointer database connected to the Internet. The shared content pointer manager is implemented as a distributed program, portions of which operate on users' terminals and other portions of which operate on the centralized content pointer database. A user's content pointers are organized in accordance with a local topical categorical hierarchy. The hierarchical organization is used to define a relevance context within which returned objects are evaluated and ordered.

Gateway

When I think Web 2.0 and social search, I think tagging. But I don't think Gateway. Or at least I didn't until I read the title to this patent, Tagging content for different activities. It focuses more upon playlists, music, and videos rather than web pages, but the timing of this patent is interesting considering the growth in tagging since it was originally filed on March 30, 2001. The abstract:

The present invention is directed to a system and method for classification of media content based upon user-defined classifications. A compilation of media content in conformity with the user-defined classifications and desired criteria may be automatically produced in accordance with the present invention. The system and method of the present invention may also be capable of selecting pieces of media content depending upon the user's mood and current activity.

GeoVector Corp

I haven't seen much Star Trek over the past few years, but when I started reading this new patent from Geovector Corp, the word "Tricorder" instantly came into my head. Pointing systems for addressing objects has a science fiction feel to it, but it appears that the technology described will be up and running in Japan sometime soon. The abstract:

Systems are arranged to provide a user information which relates to objects of interest. A user may point a hand held device toward an object to address it. The device determines which objects are being addressed by making position and attitude measurements and further a reference and search of a database containing preprogrammed information relating to objects. Information relating to objects determined as objects presently being addressed is thereafter presented at a user interface. Devices of these systems include a point reference, a direction reference, a position determining support, attitude determining support, a computer processor and database, and a user interface. Methods of systems include the steps of addressing an object, determining position and attitude, searching a database, and presenting information to a user.

I'll be looking at some new patent applications later in the week, and some other recently issued patents.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Technology & Relevancy area of the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 1:02 AM | Permalink

Greetings From Bill Slawski, SEW's New Patent Correspondent

Before I begin on some new patents that were granted on April 18th, I'd like to thank Danny, and the rest of the team here for asking me to join them.

On how I got here...

A couple of years ago, I found myself spending a fair amount of time on the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) web site searching for patents from search companies. As an English major in college, and then as a brainwashed law school student, I had developed an appetite for primary sources - in this instance, information straight from the mouths of the companies that I was trying to understand better - namely, Google and Yahoo.

The interest turned into what some might call an obsession, so I decided that I better start calling it a hobby. It's probably a strange hobby to have, but no stranger than others I could have chosen. Jumping out of airplanes with only a parachute, or surfing the reefs in shark infested waters come to mind. I started writing about some of the patents I found over at Cre8asite Forums, where I'm an administrator, and then began blogging about them at SEO by the Sea.

On the last day of the New York Search Engine Strategies this past March, Danny asked me if I might be interested in writing something for the SEW bBog about patents on a regular basis. I imagine I had a stunned look on my face, because he caught me completely off guard with the question. I managed to respond that I would be interested in discussing it with him further, and here I am.

With that introduction out of the way, let's look at some patents in this week's post on new ones.

Posted by Bill Slawski at 1:02 AM | Permalink

April 10, 2006

Google Hires Orion Search Engine Creator; Gets Extraction Algorithm

Back in September, SEW Forums moderator Edel "Orion" Garcia posted a thread about a new search technology under development. It was coincidentally called the "Orion Search Engine" but not connected with our moderator. Instead, it was developed by a university student who now, according to news reports out this weekend, works for Google. Google's also acquired his search technology.

How great this search engine was is impossible to say. The press release that inventor Ori Allon put out last September was full of excitement, but so are plenty of releases trying to attract the attention of investors and the media. The search engine itself was never available for the public to use.

It sounds like Allon mainly developed an algorithm useful in pulling out better summaries of web pages. In other words, if you did a search, you'd be likely to get back extracted sections of pages most relevant to your query. From the release:

The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go the website.

Such extraction could work well with moves by Google to expand direct answers that it offers, something all search engines are doing. Of course, the more Google and other search engines extract heavily from web pages without sending them actual traffic, the more likely they'll come under legal pressures of stepping over the fair use line.

Via Threadwatch, Google buys search algorithm invented by Israeli student from Haaretz has more details on Google getting the rights to the Orion algorithm and confirmation that Allon now works for Google. His university says that Yahoo and Microsoft were also in negotiations for the technology.

Google wins rights to Aussie algorithm from The Age reports that Allon's been with Google for about six weeks. However, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates never commented on the technology, to my knowledge. The Age just seems confused that Allon's press release mentioned public comments by Gates that there's room for improvement generally in search.

Google does deal for Aussie program from the Daily Telegraph pitches that the technology will revolutionize the way we search. Ho hum. Reality check, OK? When Google acquired the three people from Kaltix along with their search technology back in 2003, it hardly created a revolutionary change for us soon after.

By revolutionary, I mean a radical shake-up of how we search or a major leap-frogging past other players. That didn't happen post-Kaltix. We did indeed see better personalized search come from Google, what I find one of its most impressive features. But that's an evolutionary change. It works on top of other things Google has built. It doesn't overturn and throw out the base technology.

So my reality check alarm is mainly for anyone who thinks Google's going to suddenly change because Allon and this extraction algorithm are now at Google. He gives Google another good employee, and the technology will probably give Google another evolutionary change that may improve things over time, rather than instanty.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, The Orion Search Engine.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:56 AM | Permalink

April 5, 2006

Google Toolbar Patent Dispute To Go To Court

News.com reports that the Google Toolbar patent case is to proceed after Google's request for a summary judgment was denied. NetJumper sued Google around two years ago for patent infringement of retrieving information through a browser. From a quick look, you can see NetJumper has software named LinkZilla that enables "any website or software application to place a folder of links in user bookmarks with a single click." If you look at the Google Toolbar feature page, it is extremely similar to the "AutoLink" feature.

It seems like NetJumper recently introduced Bookmarks2, which may be incredibly similar to Google Toolbar version 4's bookmarks feature.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

MSN Web Spam Patents Applications & Algorithms Explored

Bill Slawski has an excellent write up on web spam through the eyes of patent applications and published papers. During Bill's research, he found PageTurner by Microsoft, which not only looks at how to establish a crawl frequency of specific Web pages, but also identifies "duplicate and near duplicate content on web pages." From one of the papers Bill referenced in the post, he notes the usage of the words "crafty porn." That leads him to a patent application we referenced last week named content evaluation by Microsoft. Anyway, Bill really digs deep into these algorithms and patent applications with links and abstracts pulled of content and video presentations. Read the full blog entry entitled Fighting web spam with algorithms.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:09 AM | Permalink

March 31, 2006

Three New Microsoft Search Patent Applications

Gary Price reports on three new Microsoft patent applications that were published yesterday. One on spam, the others on advertising.

The first is named Content evaluation; Evaluating content is described, including generating a data set using an attribute associated with the content, evaluating the data set using a statistical distribution to identify a class of statistical outliers, and analyzing a web page to determine whether it is part of the class of statistical outliers. A system includes a memory configured to store data, and a processor configured to generate a data set using an attribute associated with the content, evaluate the data set using a statistical distribution to identify a class of statistical outliers, and analyze a web page to determine whether it is part of the class of statistical outliers. Another technique includes crawling a set of web pages, evaluating the set of web pages to compute a statistical distribution, flagging an outlier page in the statistical distribution as web spam, and creating an index of the web pages and the outlier page for answering a query.

The second is named System for partial automation of content review of network advertisements; Upon receiving a proposed network advertisement from an advertiser, a publisher determines whether to automatically approve the proposed advertisement for publishing, automatically reject the proposed advertisement from being published, or manually verify the content of the proposed advertisement prior to publishing based on a distribution channel of the proposed advertisement, a trust rating of the advertiser, a business rule, or expected traffic of a location at which the proposed advertisement is to appear.

The third is named System and method for generating an orchestrated advertising campaign; A system and related techniques host and serve selective, orchestrated advertising campaigns and other content to users depending on contributing advertisers' campaign strategies as well as use interests, prior history or experiences. According to embodiments, users may navigate to a Web or other network site which contains or invokes ads or other media or content. When ad or other content is called, according to the invention in one regard a user identifier may be checked, to determine whether the user has subscribed to or had a profile established with the orchestrated ad platform of the invention. If the user does have a unique identifier associated with them, an ad engine may perform a lookup of the identifier against potential ad campaigns or delivery modes, to deliver a more coherent or orchestrated stream of ads or other media to the user. Those selected campaigns may include for instance immersive delivery modes in which a number of ads related to an area of interest, such as cars and related services or foods and restaurants, may be delivered or streamed to the user's browser or other application at a comparatively high frequency or intensity. The sequence of that content may in one regard be conditioned on the user's browsing or other history, including topics of interest as expressed for example in prior search activity, in explicit questionnaires, or in prior purchase or shopping activity, as well as other behavioral patterns such as averaged length of browsing sessions, or other parameters. Because the experience which the user receives is targeted or tailored in nature, and in addition presents a set or series of content which is selected to reflect a meaningful relationship or theme, the effectiveness of the advertising or other content delivery campaign may be enhanced compared to undifferentiated delivery techniques.

How about that for some weekend reading?

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:22 PM | Permalink

March 6, 2006

Yahoo Awarded Patents on Search Ads & More Patent Applications Issued by Microsoft, Google and Other Search Engines

Gary Price has a nice roundup of ten search patents and patent applications. In Gary's entry, he noted of two patents that have been awarded Yahoo on February 28th. The first is named Targeted advertisements using time-dependent key search, which (based on a 1 minute look) seems to be about serving ads to users based on past search queries and user profiles. The second awarded patent is named Canonicalization of terms in a keyword-based presentation system, which (based on a 2 minute look, needed more time for this one) seems to be about taking different words and applying the same meaning to them (i.e. plural/singular forms, gender forms, stem word forms, suffix forms, prefix forms, typographical error forms, word order, pattern ignoring, acronyms, stop word elimination, etc) based on user profile data. Seems like Yahoo is or wants to get very detailed with its ad program.

Gary also linked to a patent application named Accelerating user interfaces by predicting user actions which he believes this is associated with Google. This patent application seems to be very A.I. related, "anticipating user" activity and "interfaces" by monitoring "a user's browsing activities" and then inferring "one or more next documents that are most likely to be requested by the user." Scary?

Gary also links to four Microsoft patent applications, a Sonic Solutions patent application on video search, an IBM patent application and an other patent application, search related. Check them all out at Resource Shelf.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:28 PM | Permalink

February 24, 2006

More Search Patent Applications and Blog Search Research Paper

Gary Price has two new posts that make for some good weekend reading.

The first is named New Academic Paper Offers a Review of Weblog Searching which links to a 13 page PDF. Here is the abstract;

We present an analysis of a large blog search engine query log, exploring a number of angles such as query intent, query topics, and user sessions. Our results show that blog searches have different intents than general web searches, suggesting that the primary targets of blog searchers are tracking references to named entities, and locating blogs by theme. In terms of interest areas, blog searchers are, on average, more engaged in technology, entertainment, and politics than web searchers, with a particular interest in current events. The user behavior observed is similar to that in general web search: short sessions with an interest in the first few results only.

The second is named More Patents and Patent Apps for Microsoft and Yahoo which has five links to patent applications, mostly from MSN. Here they are;

Enjoy the weekend reading, I know I will.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:01 AM | Permalink

February 14, 2006

Google Won Digital Envoy Suit on Location-Technology

News.com reports that Google has won the Digital Evoy suit reported back in May 2005. In that filing, Digital Evoy claimed Google "overstepped the bounds of a contract to use Digital's IP Intelligence" when it broadened the use of the technology to the Google AdSense product. The judge said; "Digital is not entitled to equitable relief on its claim for misappropriation of trade secrets, absent a showing of Google's willful misconduct."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:51 AM | Permalink

February 9, 2006

More Yahoo & Microsoft Search Patent Applications

If you are missing your Gary Price fix, I recommend you check out a post at ResourceShelf. He has his "Search Patent Watch" expanding on several patent applications and awarded patents from Yahoo and Microsoft.

Yahoo Patent Applications: - Targeted advertisements using time-dependent key search terms - Search systems and methods using in-line contextual queries - Automated solicited message detection

Awarded Microsoft Patents: - User intention modeling for web navigation - Auto playlist generator

Microsoft Patent Applications: - Method and system for adaptive categorial presentation of search results - Life moment tagging and storage - Categorizing, voting and rating community threads - Query-based snippet clustering for search result grouping

For more commentary from Gary Price click here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 3:18 PM | Permalink

February 1, 2006

Personal Search Vertical ZoomInfo Awarded U.S. Patent

ZoomInfo, a vertical that mines open web content for information about people (and a service we've written about many times) recently received a patent from the U.S. Patent Office. Look for an official announcement next week.

Patent Info: Computer method and apparatus for collecting people and organization information from Web sites Filed: March 30, 2001 Awarded: January 3, 2006

Abstract: Computer processing method and apparatus for searching and retrieving Web pages to collect people and organization information are disclosed. A Web site of potential interest is accessed. A subset of Web pages from the accessed site are determined for processing. According to types of contents found on a subject Web page, extraction of people and organization information is enabled. Internal links of a Web site are collected and recorded in a links-to-visit table. To avoid duplicate processing of Web sites, unique identifiers or Web site signatures are utilized. Respective time thresholds (time-outs) for processing a Web site and for processing a Web page are employed. A database is maintained for storing indications of domain URLs, names of respective owners of the URLs as identified from the corresponding Web sites, type of each Web site, processing frequencies, dates of last processings, outcomes of last processings, size of each domain and number of data items found in the last processing of each Web site.

ZoomInfo also holds two other U.S. Patents that were awarded when the company was known as Eliyon. + Computer method and apparatus for determining site type of a web site + Computer method and apparatus for determining content owner of a website

Not only does ZoomInfo operate its own site (free) along with extended fee-based services for clients but also powers "people search" for A9, Business.com, and others.

A bit more about ZoomInfo, the company, in this Hoover's brief.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:52 PM | Permalink

MeeVee Gets TV Search Patents

MeeVee, which allows you to search through television listings, has gained two patents related to TV search. The patents -- 6,651,253 and 6,973,665 -- cover how MeeVee tags video content with meta data and searching through the meta data to find TV programs and content segments. The company plans a formal press announcement on the news next week. For more on MeeVee, see our past post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:32 AM | Permalink

January 30, 2006

Patent Watch: Yahoo Awarded Patent, Microsoft Has Patent Application Published

Here's info about a one patent recently awarded to Yahoo on determing similarity between documents along with recently published patent application by Microsoft dealing with browsing info on the mobile web.

U.S. Patent Awarded to Yahoo Title: Method and apparatus for measuring similarity among electronic documents Awarded: Jan 24, 2006 Filed: June 14, 1999

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for determining when electronic documents stored in a large collection of documents are similar to one another. A plurality of similarity information is derived from the documents. The similarity information may be based on a variety of factors, including hyperlinks in the documents, text similarity, user click-through information, similarity in the titles of the documents or their location identifiers, and patterns of user viewing. The similarity information is fed to a combination function that synthesizes the various measures of similarity information into combined similarity information. Using the combined similarity information, an objective function is iteratively maximized in order to yield a generalized similarity value that expresses the similarity of particular pairs of documents. In an embodiment, the generalized similarity value is used to determine the proper category, among a taxonomy of categories in an index, cache or search system, into which certain documents belong.

Microsoft Patent Application Title: Mobile information services Filed: September 15, 2005

Abstract: Mobile communications devices display contextually relevant information based on the presence, status, and identification of a user. Lens templates control how the information is displayed and can be customized and designed for specific usage profiles. The lenses that are used can be updated at any time to accommodate changes in a user's presence. The granularity of the lenses and corresponding information can also vary to accommodate different needs and preferences. Lenses can also be specialized for different events or venues. The lenses allow a user to access contextually relevant information from a mobile communications device having limited display and/or browse capabilities without requiring a user to navigate through undesired information, wasting valuable resources in the process.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:37 PM | Permalink

January 12, 2006

Google's Patent Application for Click-to-Call Advertising Published

A newly published patent application (first filed on June 30, 2004) shows that Google is looking to patent a method to provide click-to-call advertising on mobile phones. Kevin Newcomb's story: Google Looks to Patent Mobile Click-to-call Ads, offers a overview of the app and comments from Kelsey Group's, Greg Sterling.

Google is keeping its plans quiet, providing a statement saying only, "Like many companies, we file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees may come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don't. Prospective product announcements should not be inferred from our patent applications."

The application sets forth a method of scoring ads based on the various limitations of a client device, relevance of ads to users -- both contextual and behavioral -- CPM and CPC price, user preferences, and other "performance parameters." The score would determine which ad or ads to serve, as well as whether to link the user to a Web page or connect to an advertiser via phone call.

"Everybody talks about pay-per-call in wireless as a natural business model," Greg Sterling, program director at the Kelsey Group, told ClickZ News." There's definitely a lot of interest among advertisers in receiving phone calls. Our data indicate that 71 percent of small and mid-sized businesses would rather receive a phone call than a click in a performance-based ad model."

The complete patent application can be found here.

Google wasn't the only search provider having patent apps published last week. In this post, I link to seven newly published "search related" patent apps from Microsoft.

Postscript From Danny: As a reminder, Google has already been testing click to call ads, as covered here, Google Begins Test of "Click-to-Call" Advertising Program

Posted by Gary Price at 12:53 PM | Permalink

January 10, 2006

Seven Recently Published Patent Applications from Microsoft Deal with Computation of Web Page Ranking, Calculating a Docments Importance, and Search Spam Detection and More

Patent watchers might be interested in reviewing seven of recently published patent applications from Microsoft that deal with computing a web page ranking, calculating a documents "importance," web search spam, and more.

Title: Efficient computation of web page rankings Filed: July 1, 2004 Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for efficiently computing page rankings of web pages or other interconnected objects. The rankings are produced by efficiently computing a principal eigenvector of a page ranking transition matrix. The methods and systems provided herein can be used to produce page rankings in a distributed and/or incremental manner, and can be used to allocate computing resources to processing page rankings for those pages that most demand them.

Title: Method and system for calculating document importance using document classifications Filed: June 30, 2004 Abstract: A system for calculating the importance of web pages is provided. The web pages are organized hierarchically into collections. The system calculates the importance of each collection based on inter-collection links from a web page in one collection to a web page in another collection. The system then calculates the importance of web pages in the collections with a high calculated importance based on links between the web pages in those collections using, for example, a conventional page rank algorithm. The system may also calculate the importance of web pages in each collection with a low calculated importance separately based on the links between the web pages in the collection using, for example, a conventional page rank algorithm.

Title: System and method for generating normalized relevance measure for analysis of search results Filed: June 30, 2004 Abstract" A system and related techniques permit a search service operator to access a variety of disparate relevance measures, and integrate those measures into idealized or unified data sets. A search service operator may employ self-learning networks to generate relevance rankings of Web site hits in response to user queries or searches, such as Boolean text or other searches. To improve the accuracy and quality of the rankings of results, the service provider may accept as inputs relevance measures created from query logs, from human-annotated search records, from independent commercial or other search sites, or from other sources and feed those measures to a normalization engine. That engine may normalize those relevance ratings to a common scale, such as quintiles, percentages or other scales or levels. The provider may then use that idealized or normalized combined measure to, for example, train the search algorithms or heuristics to arrive at better or more accurate results.

Title: Search engine spam detection using external data Filed: May 21, 2004 Abstract: Evaluating an electronic document in connection with a search. An external source provides data for use in evaluating an electronic document retrieved by a search engine. A first confidence level of the electronic document is determined based on the externally provided data. The first confidence level indicates a likelihood that the electronic document is undesirable. A second confidence level of the electronic document is determined based on attributes of the electronic document. The second confidence level indicates a likelihood that the electronic document is unsatisfactory with respect to a search. A rating for the electronic document generated as a function of the determined first confidence level and the determined second confidence level is used to categorize the electronic document as unsatisfactory in connection with a received search request.

Title: System and method for ranking search results based on tracked user preferences Filed: June 30, 2004 Abstract: A method and system are provided for ranking search results based on user preferences. The method includes monitoring user selections in response to user receipt of search results and tracking metadata related to user selections for user selections that exhibit a threshold satisfaction level. The method additionally includes storing the tracked metadata as user preferences and adjusting a ranking mechanism to increase the weight of user preferences in order to increase a ranking for search results that exhibit user preferences. The method additionally includes storing the user selections and the keyword search upon determining that the user selections exceed a threshold satisfaction level. The method may utilize the stored user selections and keyword search upon receiving a repeat search to alter presentation of new search results to the user.

Title: Dispersing search engine results by using page category information Filed: July 1, 2004 Abstract: Systems and methods for dispersing search engine results by category. A search engine application queries a searchable index of document data associated with a plurality of electronic documents in response to a search request to identify one or more electronic documents having document data matching data included in the search request. The search engine application disperses identified electronic documents according to category data included in the document data for display to a user.

Title: Presentation-level content filtering for a search result Filed: July 1, 2004 Abstract: Presenting a search result to a user. One or more electronic documents are identified based on a search query received from a user. A search result is generated in response to identifying the one or more electronic documents. The search result includes presentation data regarding each of the identified electronic documents. An undesirable content of each of the presentation data of each of the identified electronic documents of the search result is identified. A format attribute of the presentation data of the identified undesirable content is modified. The search result including any modifications is then provided to the user.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:32 PM | Permalink

January 9, 2006

New Google Patent Application Defines Link Churn

It's patent application time! Search Engine Roundtable points to a just published patent application (not an awarded patent) from Google (congrats to Matt Cutts who is listed as a co-inventor) that's titled: Information retrieval based on historical data.

From the abstract: A system identifies a document and obtains one or more types of history data associated with the document. The system may generate a score for the document based, at least in part, on the one or more types of history data.

Barry (aka RustyBrick) also points out that the app includes a brief discussion and definition of "link churn."

Link churn is "computed as a function of an extent to which one or more links provided by the document changes over time."

The patent application also notes that Google MAT penalize the web page owner for link churn above a certain threshold. Note the exact wording in claims 60-63.

Of course, this is just patent app that was filed in December 2003 and does not guarantee that Google is using, will use, or has used any of these techniques. Nevertheless, good discussion material.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:41 AM | Permalink

January 3, 2006

Google Awarded Patent To Make Data Move Faster to Wireless Phones and Devices

News from Alexadria, Virginia (home of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) today that Google has been awarded a new patent in the wireless arena. It's far from search related but we still thought it was worth a mention since it's Google is a company many of you watch closely (understatement). From the way the patent reads (I'm far from an expert), it seems that Google has developed technology to make more data accessible at faster speeds on CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) systems.

Could licensing this technology to various wireless providers be a new revenue stream for Google?

Title: Baseband direct sequence spread spectrum transceiver Application Filed: January 26, 2001 Application Awarded: January 3, 2006

Abstract: A baseband direct sequence spread spectrum CDMA transceiver. The data signal is modulated with a Hadamard function having pseudorandomly scrambled rows. This data signal is then broadcast baseband, absent a carrier, by a relatively short, mismatched antenna. The baseband signal is spread out across the DC to 30 MHz spectrum. A low noise, high gainbandwidth product amplifier boosts the baseband RF signal. A correlator/servo system is used to actively cancel the transmit signal from the received signal. Consequently, the same antenna can be used to receive incoming baseband RF signals as well as transmit baseband RF signals, thereby providing full duplex operation.

From the Background of Invention: The advantages of CDMA carry over into high-speed wireless digital access. Increasingly, wireless digital applications are being used to access digital data (e.g., the Internet, intranet, multimedia, business data, etc.) at high speeds. With high speed wireless access, mobile users can obtain instant access to the Internet, business data (e.g., stock market quotes, sales reports, inventory information, price checks, customer data, emails, pages, etc.), and other real time data (e.g., traffic updates, weather information, sports news, etc.). The goal is to provide cellular handsets, personal digital assistants, portable communications devices, etc. the ability to transmit and receive digital data as well as make conventional telephone calls. The trend is towards ever faster mobile data speeds to meet customer demands. With greater data speeds, it is possible to provide even more data to more users. Recent CDMA based standards such as IS-95 and 3G are proposing increased data rates and capabilities.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:03 PM | Permalink

December 28, 2005

Patents, Google and Acquistions; What About Search Patents from Other Companies?

Loren over at Search Engine Journal points us to a post on SEO by the Sea by Bill Slawski that does an impressive job of listing some of the patents held or applied for by companies Google has acquired over the years like Urchin, Applied Semantics, and Kaltix. Nice work.

It's understandable with Google just being Google, that every patent application they have published or every patent they're awarded gets big attention. However, it's still important to look at what other players are doing in developing in the patent world.

I've been tracking search related patents from Google and others for years, first on my ResourceShelfPLUS site (if you feel like looking back at patents from 2003 and 2004, the page is still live) and lately here on SEW Blog. Below are links to some posts from the past year that look at recently awarded patents or just published patent apps from Yahoo, Microsoft, and many others like IBM and Xerox. One thing is for sure, the folks at the Googleplex are keeping track of what their competition is up to. Are you aware of some of the IP other companies are patenting?

+ New Microsoft Patent Apps Discusses the Building of Personalized Portals + MS Receives Patent For Semi-Auto Annotation of + Multimedia Objects + New Patent Apps from Yahoo (Data Extraction) and Microsoft (Electronic Yellow Pages) Published + A Look at Some Patent Applications from Yahoo, Microsoft and Others + New Patent Apps from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft + Yahoo Files For Several Patents + a9 Has Patent Application Published + New Patents for Google, IBM, Yahoo & Others + Even More Search Patents

Postscript: Bill Slawski has just posted a look at some of the IP Yahoo acquired since it acquired Overture here. Want more? Back in 2003, I put together this list of IP Yahoo gained via acquisitions of AltaVista and AllTheWeb.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:48 PM | Permalink

December 27, 2005

Google Faces Patent Infringement Lawsuit Over Google Talk

While doing some research, I've learned that Google is being sued for patent infringement over the VoIP portion of the Google Talk program. I've posted the full text (38 pages; PDF) of the complaint filed by Rates Technology in October here. A copy of the court docket (as of today) is posted here.

The lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of New York.

The suit includes two causes of action for patent infringement against Google.

Rates Technology says that two patents they hold (awarded in 1995, 2001) for minimizing the cost of long distance calls using the Internet are being infringed upon by Google Talk. Copies of these two patents along with one more mentioned in the filing are included in the complaint.

Rates Technology is asking for a jury trial along with: + Enforcement of the patents + Damages including the loss of profits so provide a royalty + A preliminary injuction against Google + Attorney's fees

So who is Rates Technology? That's a good question. Finding substanative material on the open web is a challenge. However, a web search did turn up this excellent blog post from TMCnet publisher Rich Tehrani, that Rates Technology, a company Tehrani says, exists, "to collect revenue from other companies" has also sued Nortel, Sharp Electronics and others over patents it holds. The post also includes has a blurb from a December 7, 1998 WSJ story about the company and recent comments (April 2005) from Rates Technology CEO, Jerry Weinberger.

The blog post also mentions that Weinberger and Rates Technology have patent agreements in place with 700-800 companies and have litigated 25 times in 15 years.

According to the court docket both parties will meet with Judge E. Thomas Boyle in early February.

I'm sure others who follow the VoIP space much more closely than we do (like Om) will have more to say.

We also learned last week that, if certain conditions are met Google Talk users will be able to chat with AOL Instant Messenger users as part of the new AOL/Google deal.

Postscript: One "fast fact" about Google Talk we blogged about after the release of the service was that some of Google Talk's voice technology is licensed from a Stockholm-based company.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:30 PM | Permalink

Google Patent May Shed Light On Google Suggest & Speeding Up Search Results

New Patent Application Explains Google Suggest over at Search Engine Roundtable points at and summarizes Bill Slawski's discussion at Cre8asite about how a patent application for Google Suggest reveals that it may gather terms from most popular searches, hot news searches, recent searches and most used searches. Bill's also got a very nice blog post, Can Google Read Your Mind? Processing Predictive Queries, on how the prediction could also be used to cache search results for anticipated queries and speed up answers even more.

Poistscript from Gary: As I've pointed on several occasions, Google Suggest is not the first tool to offer dynamic search term suggestions. In fact, other resources not only point to potential results but also take you directly to a specific page. This recent post about a new "find as you search" feature from Answers.com offers a look at several of these tools.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:08 AM | Permalink

December 9, 2005

New Patent Apps from Yahoo (Data Extraction) and Microsoft (Electronic Yellow Pages) Published

The USPTO published two patent applications yesterday. One from Yahoo and and the other from Microsoft that I think are worthy of a quick post and link here.

The Yahoo app looks at ways to automatically identify and extract data from HTML pages that the patent says is useful in building databases of unstructured web content. Very interesting. The MS patent looks at method for electronic yellow pages to contain listings in a results set for a service merchant that is outside of a specific geographical boundary, but services inside the geographical boundary, to be included in a result set of a search directed to a location inside the geographical boundary.

From Yahoo First Filed: May 4, 2005 Title: Systems and methods for identifying and extracting data from HTML pages No. 20050273706

Abstract: Systems and methods for analyzing HTML formatted web pages to automatically identify and extract desired information. A computer algorithm identifies and extracts different pieces of information from different web pages automatically after minimal manual setup. The algorithm automatically analyzes pages with different content if they have the same, or similar, formats. The algorithm is fast and efficient and performs the extraction process quickly in real-time. The systems and methods are useful to build databases from unstructured web information. The algorithm can be used as an agent that captures information about products, and compares prices or other characteristics. It can also be used to populate structured databases that, given the different pieces of information, can analyze products and their characteristics. And it can also be used for data mining applications looking for patterns useful for marketing analyses, or other uses. Note: Udi Manber, now the person in charge at A9, is listed as a co-inventor.

From Microsoft First Filed: August 12, 2005 Title: Method and system for providing service listings in electronic yellow pages No. 20050273469

Abstract: A method and system for allowing a regional service merchant that is outside of a given geographical boundary, but services inside the geographical boundary, to be included in a result set of a search directed to a location inside the geographical boundary. Text and/or glyphs are returned along with the regional service merchant's business listing so as to explain to a user why a business not physically residing in the search area has been included in the result set. An application programming interface ensures that, if a business is listed as a regional service merchant, then the text and/or glyph is stored in association with the business listing.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:05 AM | Permalink

November 29, 2005

Microsoft's "Google Base" is Code Named Fremont & MS Receives Patent For Semi-Auto Annotation of Multimedia Objects

Two items from Redmond today, Microsoft with a classified ads listing service in the works pegged as a rival to Google Base and Microsoft getting a patent on semi-automatic annotation of multimedia objects.

One of the pluses of being "first" is that from then on your service is compared to what may others might have in the works. That's just the case in this eWeek article by Ben Charny titled: Microsoft Testing Its Own 'Google Base'.

Microsoft Corp. said it is readying an online marketplace, code-named Fremont, which is apparently in response to a similar feature that rival Google Inc. introduced a few weeks ago.

Charny points out that a Freemont.live.com is up but can only be accessed and used by MS employees. Michael Arrington has a bit more on TechCrunch. He says to look for a public test in the next few weeks. Before TechCrunch, Greg Sterling posted about the system being an online classifieds move. More in Coming Soon: Windows Live Classifieds.

And while we're reporting on news from Redmond...

The US Patent and Trademark Office awarded a patent (not a patent app) to Microsoft today titled: Semi-automatic annotation of multimedia objects. It was first filed for in 2000 and is an interesting read, as patents go.

From the abstract: A multimedia object retrieval and annotation system integrates an annotation process with object retrieval and relevance feedback processes. The annotation process annotates multimedia objects, such as digital images, with semantically relevant keywords. The annotation process is performed in background, hidden from the user, as the user conducts normal searches. The annotation process is "semi-automatic" in that it utilizes both keyword-based information retrieval and content-based image retrieval techniques to automatically search for multimedia objects, and then encourages users to provide feedback on the retrieved objects. The user identifies objects as either relevant or irrelevant to the query keywords and based on this feedback, the system automatically annotates the objects with semantically relevant keywords and/or updates associations between the keywords and objects. As the retrieval-feedback-annotation cycle is repeated, the annotation coverage and accuracy of future searches continues to improve.

And from the summary: The user interface allows the user to identify multimedia objects that are more relevant to the query, as well as objects that are less or not relevant. The system monitors the user feedback using a combination of feature-based relevance feedback and semantic-based relevance feedback...During the retrieval-feedback-annotation cycle, the system adjusts the weights according to the user feedback, thereby strengthening associations between keywords and objects identified as more relevant and weakening the associations between keywords and objects identified as less relevant. If the association becomes sufficiently weak, the system removes the keyword from the multimedia object. Accordingly, the semi-automatic annotation process captures the efficiency of automatic annotation and the accuracy of manual annotation. As the retrieval-feedback-annotation cycle is repeated, both annotation coverage and annotation quality of the object database is improved.

For more on Content-Based Image Retrieval, this post might be of interest.

Postscript: Microsoft tries classifieds from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (spotted via Greg Linden) has nice details on the project with comments from Microsoft.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:11 PM | Permalink

November 17, 2005

Yahoo and MSN: New Patent Apps Published

Patent applications from Yahoo and MSN dealing with user annotations, trust networks, and domain specific database creation and searching were published today by the USPTO. Two of Yahoo's applications fit very nicely with their FUSE (Find, Use, Share, Expand) and MyWeb visions. Links and abstracts follow.

From Yahoo + Title: Search systems and methods with integration of aggregate user annotations Abstract: Computer systems and methods allow users to annotate content items found in a corpus such as the World Wide Web. Annotations, which can include any descriptive and/or evaluative metadata related to a document, are collected from a user and stored in association with that user. Users are able to annotate and view their annotations for any document they encounter while interacting with the corpus, including hits returned in a search of the corpus. Users are also able to search their annotations or to limit searches to documents they have annotated. Metadata from annotations can also be aggregated across users and aggregated metadata applied in generating search results.

+ Title: Search system and methods with integration of user annotations from a trust network Abstract: Computer systems and methods incorporate user annotations (metadata) regarding various pages or sites, including annotations by a querying user and by members of a trust network defined for the querying user into search and browsing of a corpus such as the World Wide Web. A trust network is defined for each user, and annotations by any member of a first user's trust network are made visible to the first user during search and/or browsing of the corpus. Users can also limit searches to content annotated by members of their trust networks or by members of a community selected by the user.

+ Title: System and method for providing automobile marketing research information Abstract: A system and method for providing customized reports regarding pre-sale auto interest is enclosed herein. The reports are configured to provide pre-sale marketing research information about potential shoppers of particular auto models. The reports are also configured to provide information about competitors' auto models. The reports are also configured to provide demographic and interest information of the potential shoppers of the particular auto models.

From Microsoft: + Title: Method and system for indexing and searching databases Abstract: A search system generates an index for databases by generatively sampling the databases and uses that index to identify and formulate queries for searching the databases. The generated index is referred to as a domain-attribute index and contains a domain-level index and site-level indexes. A site-level index for a database maps site attributes to distinct attribute values within the database. The domain-level index for a domain maps attribute values to database and site attribute pairs that contain those attribute values. To generate a site-level index for a database within a certain domain, the search system starts out with an initial set of the sample data for that domain. The search system generates sampling queries based on the sample data and submits the sampling queries to a database. The search system updates the site-level index based on the sampling results and uses the results to generate more sampling queries.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:23 PM | Permalink

November 9, 2005

A Look at Some Patent Applications from Yahoo, Microsoft and Others

With so much attention being placed on each and every U.S. patent application that Google has published, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look and see what others are doing in the way of search-related IP. By NO means should this be considered a complete list. It's far from it. I just did some quick research and came up with the following list of patent applications (most published within the few weeks) from a few of the major search players and a couple of other companies. Each patent is linked to the full text where you can learn more. Lots of interesting stuff going on.

Title: Moveable interface to a search engine that remains visible on the desktop Assignee: HP

Title: Method and system for identifying image relatedness using link and page layout analysis Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Method and system for classifying display pages using summaries Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Method and apparatus for performing a search Assignee: Yahoo

Title: Method and system for ranking documents of a search result to improve diversity and information richness Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Contextual flyout for search results Assignee: IBM

Title: Method and apparatus for providing information Assignee: Fujitsu

Title: Method and apparatus for identifying related searches in a database search system Assignee: Overture/Yahoo

Title: Verifying relevance between keywords and Web site contents Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Systems and methods that rank search results Assignee: Microsoft

Title: Search systems and methods with integration of user annotations Assignee: Yahoo

Title: Integration of instant messenging with Internet searching Assignee: Yahoo

Title: Search system using user behavior data Assignee: Microsoft

Want to discuss some of these non-Google patents? Check out this thread in the SEW Forums.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:23 PM | Permalink

Google Automat: Web-Based User-Assisted Classified Advertising

Many sources including Battelle, Jarvis, Ali, and nicely summarized by Susan Kuchinskas at InternetNews.com report on a new Google (new and Google--aren't those words mutually inclusive?) code named "Google Automat" that was discovered in a patent application by John Zappe at Classified Intelligence.

From InternetNews.com: A key component would be Google's ability to upsell classified ads, according to Peter Zollman, executive editor of the Classified Intelligence Report. "The way you make money with free classifieds is through add-on services," he told internetnews.com. "Google will be able to offer contextual advertising next to the classifieds but also, they could give you the option of paying more to have it displayed at the top of the list or with pictures or something like that."

The service would likely make use of Google Base, the online database that briefly went live on October 26. After a user entered information about the product or service, Automat could generate either a standalone Web page with the merchandise information or a text ad.

Zollman adds: "They're certainly planning for an all-out assault on classified advertising. They have made that clear with the URL, among other things."

The Patent Application OK, now to the patent application itselfhere it is: Title: System and method for providing on-line user-assisted Web-based advertising OR as a PDF file (with images). Patent No.: 20050216335 First Published: September 29, 2005; First Filed: March 24, 2004

Abstract: A system and method for providing on-line advertising is presented. An interface guiding on-line advertising creation is presented. An advertisement is created from at least one of user inputs and stored data and includes information describing at least one item. An advertising creative is generated in association with the advertisement and includes a hyperlink reference to the advertisement. The advertisement is hosted on-line as a Web page and the advertising creative is placed on one or more targeted Web pages.

From the Background of invention: Placing creatives and advertisements on-line for access by the general Web community can be especially problematic for individual or small advertisers. Advertising creatives must be integrated into other Web content to effectively drive Web traffic, but advertisers are generally not able to unilaterally add creatives to other Web pages. A third party Web content provider, such as a search or advertising engine, is needed. Small advertisers may not have an online Web presence, and, therefore, traditional Web advertising that drives Web traffic to the Web site of the advertiser is not possible.

Therefore, there is a need for an approach to providing Web-based user-assisted advertising. Preferably, such an approach would guide a user in the creation of advertisements describing offerings of goods or services, creatives associated with the advertisements, and advertising budgets. Such an approach would also help create and host a Web presence for individual and other advertisers. Such an approach would also facilitate driving Web traffic to hyperlinked advertisements through targeting.

Again, you can read the text here or view the 22 page application with images (cool!) here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:20 PM | Permalink

Google's Personalized Results Patent

Patents, patents. Yes, another Google patent to talk about, this one related to personalization of search results and which is getting the attention of many search marketers. Let's dive in!

Personalization of placed content ordering in search results (PDF file) is the actual patent, for your reading pleasure.

Patent reading is never a pleasure for most, of course. That's why it's nice to have someone break it down for you. Who've we got? C'mon over Loren Baker! He takes you through a summary over at Search Engine Journal in his Google Patent : Organic Results Ranked by User Profiling post.

Not enough? Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz is usually all over doing a patent breakdown but hit with time issues, he summarizes Michael Nguyen's in depth rundown, which you'll find here.

Is Google Messing With Organic Algos? from Paul Bruemmer steps beyond the patent to ask what's going on with personalization more generally.

Finally, there's our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Google to Manipulate Organic Rankings with User Profile, where there's lots and lots of discussion.

In particular, I want to highlight my comment in the thread. Like Paul, I'm stressing not what's in the patent (which may or may not be in use) but rather what's actually happening in terms of personalization at Google, Yahoo and elsewhere.

If you're worried about personalization, it's especially a look at what's actually happening now that I'd encourage you to read up on -- and I provide lots of links in that post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:28 AM | Permalink

Get Your Google Patents On CD

News.com has a nice mention of long-time search watcher Stephen Arnold having compiled more than 120 patents he believes belong to Google on a CD. Want to get them in one go? Visit his site, pay your $50, and there you go. Gary, of course, regularly posts here about patents and links to where you can download them for free (use that Legal: Patents link below this post if you are an SEW member for a fast way to see his past posts). But if you want to save yourself some time and love reading patents, this looks like an easy way to go.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:26 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

AlmondNet Gains Second Search Behavioral Ad Patent

AlmondNet has gained a second patent related to delivering up ads across the web based on things a person has searched for. More via this press release. More on AlmondNet here: New Search Behavioral Network Launched.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:17 PM | Permalink

September 29, 2005

New Patent Apps from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft

If your the type who enjoys reviewing newly published patent applications, Barry over at Search Engine Roundtable lists a bunch of newly published apps that were posted on Cre8asite earlier today. The list includes applications from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Remember, a patent app is NOT the same thing as an awarded patent. I do my best to explain the differences in this post that also includes more Yahoo patent apps and applications. Although I haven't updated the list in a while, it includes a lengthy list of search-related patents and patent applications from Microsoft. Want more? Browse my ResourcShelfPLUS site where I posted patent and patent apps (from many companies) before coming to work here at SEW.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:40 AM | Permalink

September 6, 2005

Google Patents Method to Determine Equivalent Descriptions Based on Information Needs of Searcher

Word from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today that Google was awarded a patent today that involves technology allowing the searcher to conduct a more comprehensive search by automatically determining equivalent ways (synonyms) to describe their information need.

The patent is titled: Methods and apparatus for determining equivalent descriptions for an information need, and was first filed with the USPTO in February 2003.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus determine equivalent descriptions for an information need. In one implementation, if adjacent entries in a query log contain common terms, the uncommon terms are identified as a candidate pair. The candidate pairs are assigned a score based on their frequency of occurrence, and pairs having a score exceeding a defined threshold are determined to be synonyms.

More from the patent itself: The World Wide Web ("web") contains a vast amount of information. Locating a desired portion of the information, however, can be challenging. Unless the user is aware of the specific location of the desired information, the user must rely on a service to assist in locating the information. Typically, the user will identify the information sought via a query of some form, and the service will attempt to direct the user to the information based on the query. Unfortunately, however, the user cannot always formulate the query in a sufficient manner as to obtain all of the information that the user desires. For example, the user may have an information need that can be described in multiple ways, but the user may only be aware of a limited way of describing that information need. In such a case, the user may obtain only a subset of the desired information. It would be helpful, therefore, to have methods and apparatus for determining equivalent ways of describing an information need.

The document goes on to describe a method to determine synonyms based on search terms.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:48 PM | Permalink

August 23, 2005

Google Awarded Geocoding Patent

Since patents are all the rage these days I thought I would toss out the following: Google was awarded a patent today. The patent is for technology that allows a geocode (latitude, longitude) to be generated for a postal addresses. Unlike patent applications (which are what usually get people talking) this is intellectual property that has been officially awarded to Google. The patent application was filed for in September 2003.

Title: Address geocoding Patent #: 6,934,634 Abstract: A geocoding component generates geographic coordinate information, such as latitude and longitude values, for postal addresses. A table includes a number of rows, each corresponding to one or more addresses. The geocoding component can quickly locate a particular row in the table based on a number of input address identifiers as the intersection of the sets rows that correspond to each of the address terms. The geocoding component may operate on addresses that are received by the geocoding component or extracted from documents.

A paragraph from the "summary of invention" portion of the patent discusses how the technology can also be used to automatically extract address info from a document.

Yet another aspect of the invention is directed to a method for extracting addresses from a document. The method includes identifying possible address terms based on predetermined rules, verifying that the identified possible address terms are address terms by comparing the address terms to a table containing known addresses, and examining a relative position of the verified possible address terms in the document to determine whether the verified possible address terms form a valid address.

It's quite easy to envision how this technology could be used to identify and map info based on what's listed on a web page or other document. It also might be used to help identify local search results, personalized results (based on a users address) and when and where a paid ad would be visible on a results page based on the location of a searcher.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Google Is Awarded a Geocoding Patent.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:29 PM | Permalink

August 16, 2005

Yahoo Has Social Networking Patent Published

If you have an interest in social networking, search and IR, you might want to take a look at a patent application from Yahoo that was published (not awarded) by the USPTO last week. It deals with how a user views info in a social network setting. After only a quick read it looks similar to what Yahoo is developing with their Yahoo 360 platform.

Again, this is just a patent application. I do my best to offer a brief (very brief look) at the differences between a published patent app and an awarded patent in this post (you'll also find more recent Yahoo patent apps listed).

Title: Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user Filed: April 26, 2004

Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system are directed towards managing a view of a social network user's personal information based, in part, on user-defined criteria. The user-defined criteria may be applied towards a user's relationship with each prospective viewer. The user-defined criteria may include degrees of separation between members of the social network, a relationship to the prospective viewer, as well as criteria based, in part, on activities, such as dating, employment, hobbies, and the like. The user-defined criteria may also be based on a group membership, a strength of a relationship, and the like. Such user-defined relationship criteria may then be mapped against various categories of information associated with social network user to provide customized views of the social network user.

Background of Invention: Social networking includes a concept that an individual's online personal network of friends, family colleagues, coworkers, and the subsequent connections within those networks, can be utilized to find more relevant connections for dating, job networking, service referrals, activity partners, and the like. Because individuals are more likely to trust and value the opinions from people they know than from complete strangers, social networking is typically directed towards mining these network relationships in a way that is often more difficult to do offline.

Thus, there has been a flurry of companies launching services that help people to build and mine their personal networks. However, these efforts have been predominately directed towards dating and job opportunities. Many of these companies are struggling with developing additional services that will build customer loyalty. Without the ability to extend the value of the existing networks, social networking loses its appeal. Thus, there is a need in the industry for better mechanisms to manage, mine, and cultivate personal networks. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:46 AM | Permalink

August 1, 2005

Yahoo Files For Several Patents

Before I began working with Danny and Chris here at SEW, I was tracking new search-related patents and patent apps on my ResourceShelfPLUS site. These days, we regularly read about new Google patent applications but rarely do we find info and lists of newly awarded patents and just published patent applications from other companies.

So, I'm going to do my best to track and regularly feature newly awarded search-related patents and just published patent apps on the SEW Blog.

We'll begin today with a look at Yahoo.

First, a couple of notes.

Patent applications are just that, applications. They don't guarantee that the company/person who will submitted the application will be awarded the patent. In other words, you can't always get what you want. Patent applications are usually published (not always) 18 months after the application was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office. At this point, the patent is now publicly viewable and it's a time for other people, groups, companies who oppose the patent to speak-up and let the USPTO know why it shouldn't be awarded. For example, the current Google patent application making news was submitted in December 2003. Yes, Google was doing RSS work even back then.

An awarded patent means the company/person has been granted the patent by the USPTO. Patents can be opposed after they've been granted but it's a more costly and time consuming process.

I think it's important to understand the differences.

Ok, with that out of the way, let's begin our new regular feature.

We'll start with a newly published patent application from Yahoo for techniques to run user-specific vertical searches.

Title: User-specific vertical search United States Patent Application: 20050160083 Publication Date: July 21, 2005 Filed: June 29, 2004 Abstract: Techniques for performing user-specific searches are provided. A search engine receives a search query and performs processing to determine whether a user-specific search is indicated. If the search engine so determines, user-specific data is searched using user identity information to generate user-specific search results specific to the user identified by the user identity. Accordingly, the search results include information that is specific to the user determined from the user identity associated with the search query.

Here's a selected list of a few more patent apps from Yahoo that have been published since January:

Btw, in 2003, I put together this selected list of Yahoo's patent portfolio at that time including AltaVista patents.

That's it for this post. More new patents and patent apps from other companies soon.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:32 PM | Permalink

July 29, 2005

Google Seeks Patent On RSS Ads: Filed In Dec. 2003

Google's Advertisements in RSS Patent App in our SEW Forums covers how Google has applied for a patent on putting ads into RSS and feeds. You can discuss in that forum thread, plus Threadwatch has some talk.

Postscript (from Gary): It's important to realize that this patent app was filed with the US Patent and Trademark office in December 2003. In other words Google has been thinking about and developing methods to place paid advertising into RSS feeds for at least 18 months but likely much longer. However, it has only been in the past few months that Google started to test this type of service.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:14 AM | Permalink

May 27, 2005

Digital Envoy Suit Against Google Can Go Ahead & Full-Text Of Ruling

According to this News.com report Digital Envoy's lawsuit claiming that Google breached its contract with the company, can move forward after being denied a summary judgement in a U.S. District Court last week.

The two companies had a licensing agreement as far back as 2000 that relied on Digital's IP technology to pinpoint the physical location of Web visitors for Google so that it could better serve sponsored search results. (The parties no longer work together.) Digital balked when in 2003, Google broadened use of the geo-location technology to include serving targeted advertisements onto third-party sites in a program called Google AdSense.

If you would like to read the full text of the order denying the summary judgement, you can find a pdf copy of the document here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:43 PM | Permalink

May 12, 2005

Yahoo On Patent Lawsuit: Jury Was With Us

I posted earlier about a judge declaring a mistrial in the lawsuit between Yahoo and FindWhat in the lawsuit over paid listings. Yahoo has since sent word that the deadlock wasn't over the patent claims, something not mentioned in stories about the case to date. Yahoo's statement:

We are pleased to learn the jury has determined that FindWhat infringed on all of the patent claims that were before the jury and at issue in the trial. It is unfortunate that the jury did not reach conclusion on the remaining issues. We look forward to resolving all remaining issues in the post-trial briefing that has been scheduled by the court.

Expect a further update once we have some additional stories online, after reporters follow up more with all sides on the case.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:21 PM | Permalink

Mistrial In FindWhat-Yahoo Patent Lawsuit Over Paid Listings

A patent dispute over paid listings between Yahoo and FindWhat has ended in a hung jury, with the judge declaring a mistrial. More information from CNN/Money in Search smackdown ends in hung jury. Some more background on the case can be found here from ClickZ. Yahoo and Google settled

Postscript: See Yahoo On Patent Lawsuit: Jury Was With Us for news on the jury agreeing on patent infringement issues but not other aspects of the case.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:07 PM | Permalink

April 4, 2005

Breaking Down Google's New Search Patent Application

Still haven't found time to read through that pending Google patent that all the search forums are abuzz with? Never fear, others are breaking it down for you.

Google's Patent: Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data Rand "Randfish" Fishkin at SEOmoz nicely summarizes the five most critical concepts he finds:

Document Inception: How Google could determine the age of a page or site through various means.
Rank Impact Of Content Change: How Google might decide when "fresh" content is more important than static content, how to tell when fast build up of links or content might be good -- or bad -- and other factors of change that may be factored into ranking.
Spam Detection: Means of potentially spotting spam by looking for "off-topic" link growth, speed of link gain, similarity in anchor text and other issues.
What Google Could Measure: When a domain is registered, how long, DNS records, clickthrough rate, time spent on page, personal bookmark lists, files in your cache, frequency of visit and more are things that all might be measured by Google and potentially used to influence rankings.
Impact On Search Marketers: Actually, little is covered here other than to say that to him, this patent seems to verify things people have been saying Google has been doing on various forums over the past two years.

On that last part, I'd say actually this patent application seems to cover many things that people have long speculated any search engine might do. And as I wrote before, whether Google is actually doing any of this is uncertain. I have no doubt some ideas expressed are being used. Other ideas probably aren't.

Spotted via SEO Book, Google Patent Analysis from the Wolf-Howl blog is another good summary of key factors coming out of the application.

Over at the Search Science blog, New Google patent proves "sandbox" exists from Xan Porter is actually his take on why the patent doesn't seem to explain the sandbox operation some feel Google has been following.

For further resources, see the rundown on forum threads I covered in my earlier post: New Google Patent May Give Sandbox & Inner Workings Info.

Want to discuss? Join our forum thread, Does New Google Patent Validate Sandbox Theory?.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:31 PM | Permalink

Yahoo & FindWhat Face Off In Court This Month On Patents

Yahoo and Google settled their differences over a patent lawsuit involving paid listings last year, but Yahoo and FindWhat will duke it out in court later this month. Yahoo!/FindWhat Patent Dispute Headed for Trial from ClickZ has more details.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:36 PM | Permalink

February 24, 2005

a9 Has Patent Application Published

InternetNews.com reports that a9 (an Amazon subsidiary) hopes to have some its technology patented. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently published a patent application from a9 titled: Server architecture and methods for persistently storing and serving event data. The article mentions that, "the patent application discloses what is likely already Amazon.com's de facto search architecture, both for A9 and the e-commerce site."

More in the article: A9 Search Looks to Patent Its Shtick. If you would like to review a9's patent app, it's available here. More patents? In November, SearchDay published a compilation. Here's a blog post that lists several more.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:21 AM | Permalink

December 27, 2004

New Patents for Google, IBM, Yahoo & Others

I mentioned in a post about IBM yesterday that Big Blue has been racking up plenty of search patents. You'll see several brand new IBM search-related patents and pre-grant patent applications in the following update along with new patents and apps for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others.

What follows is another helping of new patents and published patent applications via U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This is not a comprehensive list. I've compiled these lists of search patents and published patent appplications on my ResourceShelfPLUS site for about a year. My first compilation on the SEW site was posted on SearchDay and the blog in November.

Let's get started!

Recently Published Pre-Grant Patent Applications Systems and methods for searching using queries written in a different character-set and/or language from the target pages Assignee: Google Published: December 23, 2004

Personalized indexing and searching for information in a distributed data processing system Assignee: IBM Published: December 23, 2004

Content-driven speech- or audio-browser Assignee: Phillips Electronics Published: December 23, 2004

Architecture for generating responses to search engine queries Assignee: NA Published: December 16, 2004 NOTE: One of the inventors, Eric Brill, is the head of the Text Mining, Search and Navigation Group at Microsoft.

Universal search interface systems and methods Assignee: Yahoo! Published: December 9, 2004

System & method of identifying trendsetters Assignee: NA Published: December 9, 2004

Method for implementing search engine Assignee: NA Published: December 9, 2004

Recently Awarded Patents

Method and apparatus for improved information representation Assignee: Surfnotes Published: December 28, 2004

System and method for associating search results Assignee: IBM Awarded: December 14, 2004

Organizing and categorizing hypertext document bookmarks by mutual affinity based on predetermined affinity criteria Assignee: IBM Awarded: December 14, 2004

System and method for dynamically optimizing a banner advertisement to counter competing advertisements Assignee: IBM Awarded: December 7, 2004

System and method for improving answer relevance in meta-search engines Assignee: Xerox Awarded: December 7, 2004

Very-large-scale automatic categorizer for web content Assignee: Microsoft Awarded: November 30, 2004

System and method allowing advertisers to manage search listings in a pay for placement search system using grouping Assignee: Overture (Yahoo!) Awarded: November 30, 2004

Method, system and program for providing indexed web page contents to a search engine database Assignee: IBM Awarded: November 23, 2004

Posted by Gary Price at 4:09 PM | Permalink

December 1, 2004

Google Files to Toss Out Patent Suit

This is an update/clarification about a law suit recently filed by Google that we posted about earlier today.

Here's the update:

The complaint filed by Google (November 18, 2004) and we posted about earlier today is in response to a patent suit filed by Skyline Software in May against Keyhole (now part of Google. After the was transferred to a California court, Google filed acomplaint asking for a declaration of noninfringement and patent invalidity. In other words, make the original complaint (Keyhole infringing on Skyline's patent) invalid.

About Skyline, "Skyline's 'Digital Earth' is compiled from many kinds of information provided by partners and converted to a real-time 3D streaming format with our suite of simple yet powerful software tools. This interactive 3D world allows users to virtually fly anyplace on the planet, see it from any perspective, then query or interact with the Digital Earth in a natural way. The technology enables new virtual tourism, virtual real estate, interactive sports, media and 3D mapping applications on the Net, and provides a rich personal experience."

Posted by Gary Price at 6:44 AM | Permalink

November 18, 2004

Even More Search Patents

Earlier this week SearchDay published a list with several new search-related patents.

Due to space limitation we were unable to run the full list. Here are several more recently awarded patents along with a few pregrant patent applications.

Awarded Patents Method and system for retrieving search results from multiple disparate databases Assignee: NA Awarded: October 19, 2004

Content based web advertising Assignee: Ricoh Awarded: October 12, 2004

Systems and methods for predicting traffic on internet sites Assignee: Yahoo Awarded: October 5, 2004

Method of searching multimedia data Assignee: LG Electronics Awarded: September 21, 2004

System for automatically generating queries Assignee: Xerox August 17, 2004

============ ============

Published Patent Apps

Method and apparatus for search engine World Wide Web crawling Assignee: IBM Published: November 11, 2004

System and method for generating refinement categories for a set of search results Assignee: IBM Published: November 4, 2004 Method for the display of results in a search engine Assignee: NA Published: October 21, 2004

Method of distributing targeted Internet advertisements based on search terms Assignee: aQuantive, Inc. Published: October 21, 2004

Apparatus and method of organizing bookmarked web pages into categories Assignee: IBM Published: October 14, 2004

Systems and methods for generating concept units from search queries Assignee: Yahoo Published: October 14, 2004

Method for finding convergence of ranking of web page Assignee: NA Published: September 30, 2004

Systems and methods for enabling a user to find information of interest to the user Assignee: NA Published: September 23, 2004

Method improving pay-per-click web-based search engines, and the like Assignee: NA Published: August 12, 2004

Method and apparatus for position bidding Assignee: NA Published: August 2, 2004

Posted by Gary Price at 2:42 AM | Permalink

November 17, 2004

Latest Search Patents

Gary's a search patent watcher extraordinaire, and in yesterday's SearchDay, he provides a round-up of recent search patents awarded to Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, IBM, HP and others. Check it out: New Search Related Patents.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:38 AM | Permalink

September 22, 2004

Australia's Sensis Files for Patents

Sensis patents search engine Source: Australia IT

>From the article, "TELSTRA'S highly profitable directories business, Sensis, has lodged global patents for part of its new internet search engine in a bid to stymie growing competition from global search giants Yahoo and Google. Sensis search chief Greg Ellis said the patents related to the company's online system Bidsmart, which let advertisers choose their level of payments based on auction process. 'Ours is different in that we use geography as a parameter as well as price. My understanding of Overture (Yahoo) and Google is that they use primarily price,' he said.

'We have registered a patent application where price and geography are the determinants. It sits in a patent registration, then people have the right to object to that. If they can demonstrate they are already doing that, then we won't be successful.'"

Posted by Gary Price at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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