Extensible search term suggestion engine

• US 10,346,478 B2
• Filed: 07/15/2013
• Issued: 07/09/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 11/16/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Gebhard, Derek S., Wautier, Marc, Mishra, Manav, Averett, Edward Boyle, Elliott, Brendan D., Wood, David J. G., Fortier, Philip P., Aron, Andrei T., Elangovan, Vivekanandan, Leung, Kwong K., Gurunathan, Arun, Cruz Sanchez, Octavio Alfredo, Vaidyanathan, Priya
• Primary Examiner(s): Burke, Jeff A
• Assistant Examiner(s): Nguyen, Cindy
• Application Number:
  US13/942,050
• Publication Number:
  US 20130304757A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,185 Days
• Field of Search: 707767
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3322 using system suggestions G06F16/3325 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90324 using system suggestions
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90332 Natural language query formulation or dialogue systems

Abstract

A search term suggestion engine of a computing device receives characters of user data as the characters are input. The user data is at least part of a search term to be provided to one of multiple applications to search for the search term. An indication of multiple suggestion sources is received from the one application, and one or more suggested search terms are obtained, from the multiple suggestion sources, based on the received characters. One or more suggested search terms can also be obtained from the multiple suggestion sources based on one or more linguistic alternatives for the received characters. The one or more suggested search terms are combined into a combined set of suggested search terms, and the combined set of suggested search terms is returned to a search user interface for presentation to the user.

Claims

1. A method of obtaining search term suggestions from an extensible search term suggestion engine, the method comprising:

receiving characters of user data as the characters are input into a search user interface specific to a first application, wherein the user data is at least part of a search term to be provided to the first application to search for the search term, wherein the first application is one of multiple applications on a computing device and separate from the extensible search term suggestion engine;

receiving, from the first application prior to presentation of suggested search terms, an indication specifying a first suggestion source and a second suggestion source to use for generating the suggested search terms, both the first suggestion source and the second suggestion source identifying and generating at least one suggested search term based on the characters;

obtaining, from the first suggestion source and the second suggestion source specified in the indication, the suggested search terms;

combining the suggested search terms from the first suggestion source and the second suggestion source specified in the indication into a combined set of suggested search terms;

identifying, for the first suggestion source, a predetermined number of suggested search terms to be included in the combined set of suggested search terms;

determining that the first suggestion source returns fewer than the predetermined number of suggested search terms;

including in the combined set of suggested search terms, a number of suggested search terms equal to a difference between the predetermined number and a number of suggested search terms returned by the first suggestion source from another suggestion source; and

returning the combined set of suggested search terms to the search user interface specific to the first application for presentation to a user.

2. A method as recited in claim 1, further comprising repeating the obtaining, combining, and returning as each of multiple additional characters of the user data input are received.

3. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein one of the first suggestion or the second suggestion source is a local file source that provides one or more suggested search terms based on files stored on a local storage device of the computing device.

4. A method as recited in claim 3, the local file source modifying the characters to identify one or more suggested search terms based on a threshold ratio that limits a number and a frequency of the received characters being modified, the modifying comprising swapping ones of the received characters, adding one or more characters to the received characters, or deleting one or more characters of the received characters, the local file source ranking the one or more suggested search terms based on relevance to the received characters and a layout of a keyboard of the computing device.

5. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein one of the first suggestion or the second suggestion source is a per user search history source that provides one or more suggested search terms based on a history of search terms entered by the user of the computing device.

6. A method as recited in claim 5, wherein the per user search history source provides one or more suggested search terms based on the history of search terms entered by the user of the computing device to different ones of the multiple applications, the history of search terms being maintained by the per user search history source and roamed to different computing devices to make the history of search terms available to the different computing devices.

7. A method as recited in claim 5, the per user search history source modifying the characters to identify one or more suggested search terms, the modifying comprising swapping ones of the received characters, adding one or more characters to the received characters, or deleting one or more characters of the received characters.

8. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein one of the first suggestion source or the second suggestion source is the first application.

9. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more suggested search terms obtained from the first suggestion source or the second suggestion source includes one of an image, additional descriptive text related to the one or more search terms, or audio content.

10. A method as recited in claim 1, wherein combining the one or more suggested search terms comprises:

removing duplicate suggested search terms from the suggested search terms obtained from the first suggestion source and from the second suggestion source; and

ordering the suggested search terms in the combined set of suggested search terms based on the suggestion sources from which the suggested search terms are obtained.

11. A method as recited in claim 10, further comprising receiving, from the first application, an additional indication of which of the first suggestion source or the second suggestion source are to have their suggested search terms be included earlier in the combined set of suggested search terms than which other of the multiple suggestion sources, the ordering comprising ordering the suggested search terms based on the additional indication.

12. A method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

including in the combined set of suggested search terms, for the first suggestion source and the second suggestion source, the number of suggested search terms from the suggestion source if at least the number of suggested search terms is obtained from the suggestion source.

13. One or more computer storage media having stored thereon multiple instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, cause the one or more processors to:

receive characters of user data as the characters are input, wherein the user data is at least part of a search term to be provided to an application to search for the search term;

determine one or more linguistic alternatives for the characters, wherein the one or more linguistic alternatives are determined based in part on an indication received from the application that specifies which of one or more languages to use for the one or more linguistic alternatives;

provide both the characters and the one or more linguistic alternatives to multiple suggestion sources prior to presentation of one or more suggested search terms, each of the multiple suggestion sources identifying and generating the one or more suggested search terms based on the characters;

receive, from the multiple suggestion sources, one or more suggested search terms based on the one or more linguistic alternatives and the characters; and

combine the one or more suggested search terms into a combined set of suggested search terms;

identify, for each of the multiple suggestion sources, a number of suggested search terms to be included in the combined set of suggested search terms;

include in the combined set of suggested search terms, for each of the multiple suggestion sources, one or more suggested search terms from another suggestion source if at least the number of suggested search terms is not obtained from the suggestion source; and

return the combined set of suggested search terms to a search user interface for display.

14. One or more computer storage media as recited in claim 13, wherein the characters of user data comprise Latin alphabet letters, and the one or more linguistic alternatives include one or more East Asian language characters.

15. One or more computer storage media as recited in claim 14, wherein to receive one or more suggested search terms is to receive one or more suggested search terms in Latin alphabet letters and receive one or more suggested search terms in East Asian language characters.

16. One or more computer storage media as recited in claim 13, wherein to determine one or more linguistic alternatives for the characters is to determine the one or more linguistic alternatives based in part on linguistic alternatives from previous search terms.

17. One or more computer storage media as recited in claim 13, wherein to determine one or more linguistic alternatives for the characters is to identify one or more East Asian language characters represented by the characters.

18. A device comprising:

one or more processors; and

one or more computer storage media having stored thereon multiple instructions that, responsive to execution by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform acts comprising;

receiving characters of user data as the characters are input, wherein the user data is at least part of a search term to be provided to an application to search for the search term, wherein the application is one of multiple applications on the device;

receiving, from the application prior to presentation of one or more suggested search terms based on the characters, an indication specifying which of multiple suggestion sources to use for the one or more suggested search terms, each of the multiple suggestion sources identifying and generating the one or more suggested search terms based on the characters;

obtaining, from each of the multiple suggestion sources specified in the indication, the one or more suggested search terms based on the received characters;

combining the one or more suggested search terms into a combined set of suggested search terms;

identifying, for each of the multiple suggestion sources, a number of suggested search terms to be included in the combined set of suggested search terms;

including in the combined set of suggested search terms, for each of the multiple suggestion sources, one or more suggested search terms from another suggestion source if at least the number of suggested search terms is not obtained from the suggestion source; and

returning the combined set of suggested search terms to a search user interface for presentation to a user.

19. A device as recited in claim 18, the acts further comprising:

including in the combined set of suggested search terms, for each of the multiple suggestion sources, the number of suggested search terms from the suggestion source if at least the number of suggested search terms is obtained from the suggestion source.

20. A device as recited in claim 18, the one or more suggested search terms including multiple suggested search terms, and the acts further comprising ordering the multiple suggested search terms by arranging the multiple suggested search terms in a particular order that is indicated by the application.