Serving advertisements using a search of advertiser Web information

• US 20040267725A1
• Filed: 06/30/2003
• Published: 12/30/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Harik, Georges R.
• Granted Patent: US 7,647,299 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

Advertisers are permitted to put targeted ads on, or to serve ads in association with, various content such as search results pages, Web pages, e-mail, etc., without requiring the advertiser to enter and/or maintain certain targeting information, such as keyword targeting. This may be accomplished by using a searchable data structure, such as an inverted index for example, of available advertiser Web information. The advertiser Web information may include terms and/or phrase extracted from the advertiser'"'"'s Website. In particular, a search query may be used to search for matching advertisers, and therefore matching ads. For example, the search query can be used to search an inverted index including words and/or phrases extracted from advertiser Websites. The advertiser Web page, or some other identifier, can be used as a key to search for an associated ad.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

a) accepting a search query;

b) searching a searchable data structure including advertiser Web page information;

c) accepting search results;

d) retrieving at least one advertisement using at least a portion of the accepted search results.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the searchable data structure is an inverted index.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the inverted index includes entries, each entry including a term and one or more Web page identifiers.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein the inverted index includes entries, each entry including a term and one or more pairs, each pair including a Web page identifier and a term count.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein the inverted index includes entries, each entry including a term extracted from advertiser Web pages and one or more Web page identifiers that identifier advertiser Web page in which the term appears.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one advertisement is retrieved from a set of advertiser information, the set of advertiser information including information identifying advertiser Web pages, and

wherein the searchable data structure including advertiser Web page information includes information extracted exclusively from the identified advertiser Web pages.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein each of the search results have a score.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

e) scoring, using at least the search result scores, at least some of the retrieved at least one advertisement.

9. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

e) scoring, using at least the search result scores and further using at least one of (1) ad performance information, (2) ad price information (3) advertiser quality information, and (4) user information, at least some of the retrieved at least one advertisement.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the searchable data structure includes entries, each entry including a term and one or more Web page identifiers, and

wherein the act of retrieving at least one advertisement using at least a portion of the accepted search results uses Web page identifiers included in the search results.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the Web page identifiers are used as lookup keys to a database of advertisement information.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the at least one advertisement is not one of the accepted search results.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein the act of retrieving at least one advertisement is performed without consideration of expressly entered targeting information.

14. The method of claims 1 wherein the act of retrieving at least one advertisement is performed without consideration of keyword targeting information.

15. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

e) generating a document including (1) search results determined using the search query and a second searchable data structure, and (2) the at least one advertisement.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein a format of each of the search results is different from a format of each of the at least one advertisement.

17. A method comprising:

a) retrieving advertiser Web page information; and

b) building a searchable data structure using the retrieved advertiser Web page information exclusively.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the act of retrieving advertiser Web page information includes:

1) obtaining advertiser Web page identifiers from a database of advertisement information; and

2) crawling, in accordance with a policy, the advertiser Website identified by the advertiser Web page identifiers.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the advertiser Web page identifiers are unique locators.

20. The method of claim 18 wherein the advertiser Web page identifiers are URLs.

21. The method of claim 17 wherein the act of building a searchable data structure using the retrieved advertiser Web page information exclusively includes extracting terms from advertiser Websites;

and

2) building an inverted index.

22. The method of claim 21 wherein the inverted index includes entries and wherein each entry includes a term and one or more Web page identifiers.

23. A search engine comprising:

a) a query processor;

b) a first index including information derived from Web pages of the World Wide Web; and

c) a second index including information derived exclusively from Web pages of advertisers.

24. Apparatus comprising:

a) a storage facility including;

1) advertisement information including ads, and

2) a searchable data structure including advertiser Web page information;

b) means for generating search results using, at least, the searchable data structure; and

c) means for providing one or more ads from the advertisement information using, at least, the generated search results.

25. The apparatus of claim 24 wherein the advertisement information includes records, each record including an ad and an advertiser Web page identifier.

26. The apparatus of claim 25 wherein the advertiser Website information included in the searchable data structure is derived from the advertiser Web page identifiers included in records of the advertisement information.

27. The apparatus of claim 24 wherein the means for providing one or more ads from the advertisement information includes means for determining at least one Web page identifier from the search results, and means for looking up the one or more ads from the advertisement information using the determined at least one Web page indicator.

28. Apparatus comprising:

a) an input for accepting a search query;

b) means for searching a searchable data structure including advertiser Web page information to generate search results; and

c) means for retrieving at least one advertisement using at least a portion of the accepted search results.

29. The apparatus of claim 28 wherein the searchable data structure is an inverted index.

30. The apparatus of claim 29 wherein the inverted index includes entries, each entry including a term and one or more Web page identifiers.

31. The apparatus of claim 29 wherein the inverted index includes entries, each entry including a term and one or more pairs, each pair including a Web page identifier and a term count.

32. The apparatus of claim 29 wherein the inverted index includes entries, each entry including a term extracted from advertiser Web pages and one or more Web page identifiers that identifier advertiser Web page in which the term appears.

33. The apparatus of claim 28 wherein the at least one advertisement is retrieved from a set of advertiser information, the set of advertiser information including information identifying advertiser Web pages, and

wherein the searchable data structure including advertiser Web page information includes information extracted exclusively from the identified advertiser Web pages.

34. The apparatus of claim 28 wherein each of the search results have a score.

35. The apparatus of claim 34 further comprising:

d) means for scoring, using at least the search result scores, at least some of the retrieved at least one advertisement.

36. The apparatus of claim 34 further comprising:

d) means for scoring, using at least the search result scores and further using at least one of (1) ad performance information, (2) ad price information (3) advertiser quality information, and (4) user information, at least some of the retrieved at least one advertisement.

37. The apparatus of claim 28 wherein the searchable data structure includes entries, each entry including a term and one or more Web page identifiers, and

wherein the means for retrieving at least one advertisement using at least a portion of the accepted search results uses Web page identifiers included in the search results.

38. The apparatus of claim 37 wherein the Web page identifiers are used as lookup keys to a database of advertisement information.

39. The apparatus of claim 28 wherein the at least one advertisement is not one of the accepted search results.

40. The apparatus of claim 28 wherein the means for retrieving at least one advertisement does not consider expressly entered targeting information.

41. The apparatus of claims 28 wherein the means for retrieving at least one advertisement does not consider keyword targeting information.

42. The apparatus of claim 28 further comprising:

d) means for generating a document including (1) search results determined using the search query and a second searchable data structure, and (2) the at least one advertisement.

43. The apparatus of claim 42 wherein a format of each of the search results is different from a format of each of the at least one advertisement.

44. Apparatus comprising:

a) means for retrieving advertiser Web page information; and

b) means for building a searchable data structure using the retrieved advertiser Web page information exclusively.

45. The apparatus of claim 44 wherein the means for retrieving advertiser Web page information includes:

1) an input for obtaining advertiser Web page identifiers from a database of advertisement information; and

2) a crawler for crawling, in accordance with a policy, the advertiser Website identified by the advertiser Web page identifiers.

46. The apparatus of claim 45 wherein the advertiser Web page identifiers are unique locators.

47. The apparatus of claim 45 wherein the advertiser Web page identifiers are URLs.

48. The apparatus of claim 44 wherein the means for building a searchable data structure using the retrieved advertiser Web page information exclusively includes means for extracting terms from advertiser Websites;

and

2) means for building an inverted index.

49. The apparatus of claim 48 wherein the inverted index includes entries and wherein each entry includes a term and one or more Web page identifiers.