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?