Search systems and methods with integration of user annotations

• US 20050234891A1
• Filed: 03/15/2005
• Published: 10/20/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lee, Kevin, Walther, Eckart, Lu, Qi, Diab, Ali, Ku, David, Tam, Chung-Man
• Granted Patent: US 8,005,850 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/8365 Query optimisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

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.

Claims

1. A method for responding to a user query, the method comprising:

receiving a query submitted by a user;

searching a corpus comprising a plurality of documents to identify one or more hits, wherein each hit is a document from the corpus that is determined to be relevant to the query;

accessing a library of annotations created by the user, each annotation being associated with one of the documents in the corpus and including user-specific metadata related to that document;

identifying, as an annotated hit, each of the hits that is associated with a matching one of the annotations;

generating a search report including a listing of the hits, the search report further indicating, for each hit, whether the hit is an annotated hit; and

transmitting the search report to the user.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the search report includes a visual highlight element applied to each hit that is an annotated hit.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the user-specific metadata included in the annotations includes a rating and wherein the visual highlight element applied to each annotated hit depends on the rating included in the matching annotation.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein generating the search report further includes:

for each annotated hit, providing in the search report a control element operable by the user to request a display of the user-specific metadata of the matching annotation.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein generating the search report further includes:

for each annotated hit, incorporating into the listing of the hits at least some of the user-specific metadata from the matching annotation.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein generating the search report includes:

for each hit that is not an annotated hit, providing a control element operable by the user to create a new annotation associated with the hit.

7. The method of claim 6 further comprising:

receiving the new annotation from the user; and

adding the new annotation to the library of annotations.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

regenerating the search report to further indicate that the newly annotated hit is an annotated hit; and

transmitting the regenerated search report to the user.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein generating the search report further includes:

generating a separate listing including only annotated hits.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the user-specific metadata included in each annotation includes a rating of the associated document and wherein the separate listing includes only annotated hits for which the matching annotation includes a favorable rating.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the user-specific metadata included in each annotation includes a rating of the associated document and wherein generating the search report includes determining an order for the listing of the hits based at least in part on the ratings of the annotated hits.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein generating the search report further includes eliminating an annotated hit from the listing of the hits in the event that the rating is an unfavorable rating.

13. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

searching the library of annotations to identify one or more additional annotated hits, wherein each additional annotated hit corresponds to a document from the corpus for which the associated annotation includes user-specific metadata that is determined to be relevant to the query; and

incorporating the additional annotated hits into the listing of the hits in the search results page.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein searching the corpus includes:

extracting a search term from the user query; and

identifying as a hit each document in the corpus that contains the search term.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein searching the store of annotations includes identifying as an additional annotated hit each document in the corpus for which the user-specific metadata includes the search term.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein the library of annotations further includes at least one annotation that is associated with a group of documents in the corpus and wherein any hit that is one of the group of documents is identified as an annotated hit.

17. The method of claim 1 wherein the user-specific metadata includes an item of information explicitly input by the user.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the item of information is a rating of the associated document.

19. The method of claim 17 wherein the item of information is a keyword describing the associated document.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein the item of information is a label selected from a predefined vocabulary.

21. The method of claim 17 wherein the item of information is a free-text description of the associated document.

22. The method of claim 1 wherein the corpus includes a plurality of World Wide Web pages.

23. The method of claim 1 wherein the user is a human.

24. The method of claim 1 wherein the user is a computer.

25. A method for responding to a user query, the method comprising:

receiving a query from a user;

accessing a library of annotations created by the user, each annotation being associated with one of a plurality of documents belonging to a corpus, each annotation further including user-specific metadata related to the associated document;

identifying one or more hits among the documents associated with the annotations, wherein each hit is a document from the corpus that is determined to be relevant to the query;

generating a search report including a listing of the hits, the listing including only documents for which the library has an associated annotation; and

transmitting the search report to the user.

26. The method of claim 25 wherein identifying one or more hits includes comparing the query to contents of each document associated with one of the annotations.

27. The method of claim 26 wherein the act of comparing includes:

extracting a search term from the query; and

for each document associated with one of the plurality of annotations, detecting whether the search term is present in the document,

wherein the document is identified as a hit in the event that the search term is present in the document.

28. The method of claim 25 wherein identifying one or more hits includes comparing the query to the user-specific metadata of the annotations.

29. The method of claim 28 wherein identifying one or more hits further includes:

extracting a search term from the query; and

detecting, for each of the annotations, whether the search term is present in the user-specific metadata,

wherein the associated document is identified as a hit in the event that the search term is present in the user-specific metadata.

30. The method of claim 29 further comprising:

for each document associated with one of the plurality of annotations, detecting whether the search term is present in the document,

wherein the document is identified as a hit in the event that the search term is present in the document.

31. The method of claim 29 wherein the user-specific metadata includes a plurality of fields and the query specifies which of the fields are to be considered during the act of detecting.

32. The method of claim 25 further comprising:

receiving from the user a selection of a subset of the library of annotations to be searched,

wherein the act of identifying one or more hits is performed only for annotations in the selected subset of the library.

33. The method of claim 25 wherein the search report further includes, for each hit, a control element operable by the user to request a display of the user-specific metadata of the matching annotation.

34. The method of claim 25 wherein the search report further includes, for each hit, at least some of the user-specific metadata from the associated annotation.

35. The method of claim 25 wherein the user-specific metadata included in each annotation includes a rating of the associated document and wherein the documents in the listing are placed in an order determined based at least in part on the ratings of the hits.

36. The method of claim 25 wherein the library of annotations further includes at least one annotation that is associated with a group of documents in the corpus and wherein any document that is one of the group of documents is identified as a hit.

37. The method of claim 25 wherein the corpus is the World Wide Web.

38. The method of claim 25 wherein the user is a human.

39. The method of claim 25 wherein the user is a computer.

40. A computer system for responding to user queries, the system comprising:

an index data store configured to store a searchable representation of a plurality of documents from a corpus;

a personalization data store configured to store a library of annotations created by users, each annotation being associated with one of the documents in the corpus and including user-specific metadata related to that document; and

a search server communicably coupled to the index data store and the personalization data store,

the search server including;

input control logic configured to receive a query from a querying user;

search control logic configured to search the index data store to identify one or more hits, wherein each hit is a document from the corpus that is determined to be relevant to the received query;

personalization control logic configured to identify, as an annotated hit, each of the hits that is associated with a matching one of the annotations created by the querying user; and

reporting control logic configured to generate a search report including a listing of the hits, the search report further indicating, for each hit, whether the hit is an annotated hit, the reporting control logic being further configured to transmit the search report to the user.

41. A computer system for responding to user queries, the system comprising:

an index data store configured to store a searchable representation of a plurality of documents from a corpus;

a personalization data store configured to store a library of annotations created by users, each annotation being associated with one of the documents in the corpus and including user-specific metadata related to that document; and

a search server communicably coupled to the index data store and the personalization data store,

the search server including;

input control logic configured to receive a query from a querying user;

search control logic configured to identify, as a hit, one or more of the documents associated with annotations created by the querying user; and

reporting control logic configured to generate a search report including a listing of the hits, the listing including only documents for which the library of annotations includes an annotation by the querying user, the reporting control logic being further configured to transmit the search report to the user.