Search system and methods with integration of user annotations from a trust network

• US 20050256866A1
• Filed: 03/15/2005
• Published: 11/17/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Xu, Zhichen, Lee, Kevin, Walther, Eckart, Lu, Qi, Mao, Jianchang, Diab, Ali, Ku, David, Tam, Chung-Man, Norton, Kenneth
• Granted Patent: US 8,788,492 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24573 using data annotations, e.g. user-defined metadata
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services

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.

Claims

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

receiving a query submitted by a querying one of a plurality of users;

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

building a trust network for the querying user, the trust network having as members a subset of the plurality of users including at least one user other than the querying user;

accessing a store of annotations created by the plurality of users, each annotation being associated with a subject one of the documents in the corpus and with a creating one of the plurality of users, each annotation including user-specific metadata related to the subject document;

identifying, as an annotated hit, each of the hits that is the subject document of at least one matching annotation, wherein the creating user of each matching annotation is one of the members of the trust network;

generating a search report including a listing of the hits, wherein for each annotated hit, the search report includes information about at least one of the matching annotations; and

transmitting the search report to the querying user.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the members of the trust network include at least one other user explicitly identified by the querying user as a friend.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising:

providing a trust network interface operable by the plurality of users to identify others of the plurality of users as friends;

receiving identifications of friends from a plurality of inputting users, including the querying user, via the trust network interface; and

storing a list of identified friends for each inputting user.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein building the trust network for the querying user includes:

retrieving a list of identified friends for the querying user; and

adding, as a member of the trust network, at least one of the identified friends of the querying user.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein building the trust network for the querying user further includes:

retrieving a list of identified friends for a first one of the trust network members; and

adding, as a member of the trust network, at least one of the identified friends of the first one of the trust network members.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein building the trust network for the querying user further includes:

adding, as members of the trust network, identified friends of the trust network members that are connected to the querying user with a degree of separation that does not exceed a maximum value.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein building the trust network for the querying user further includes:

adding the querying user to the trust network as a member.

8. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

assigning a trust weight to each friend in the list of identified friends.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the trust weight is assigned based on a user input received via the trust network interface.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein building the trust network for the querying user includes:

selecting a user to add to the trust network as a member based at least in part on the trust weight.

11. The method of claim 2 wherein building the trust network for the querying user includes:

automatically populating a list of identified friends for the querying user from a list of users with whom the querying user communicates.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the list of users with whom the querying user communicates includes a list of instant messaging contacts maintained by the querying user.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein the list of users with whom the querying user communicates includes an e-mail address book maintained by the querying user.

14. The method of claim 11 wherein the list of users with whom the querying user communicates includes a list of members of a community to which the querying user belongs.

15. The method of claim 11 further comprising:

providing a trust network interface operable by the querying user to edit the automatically populated list of friends.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein the members of the trust network are members of a selected community of users, the selected community being selected by the querying user.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the querying user is also a member of the selected community.

18. The method of claim 16 wherein the querying user is not a member of the selected community.

19. The method of claim 16 further comprising:

receiving from the querying user an identifier of the selected community.

20. The method of claim 1 wherein the querying user is one of the members of the trust network.

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

22. The method of claim 21 wherein the user-specific metadata included in the annotations includes a rating, the method further comprising:

for each annotated hit, extracting a rating from each matching annotation and computing an average rating,

wherein the visual highlight element applied to each annotated hit depends on the average rating.

23. The method of claim 1 wherein the user-specific metadata included in the annotations includes a rating, the method further comprising:

for each annotated hit, extracting a rating from each matching annotation and computing an average rating,

wherein generating the search report includes determining an order for the listing of the hits based at least in part on the average ratings of the annotated hits.

24. 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 at least one of the matching annotations.

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

for each annotated hit, providing in the search report information extracted from at least one of the matching annotations.

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

generating a separate listing including only annotated hits.

27. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

searching the store of annotations to identify one or more additional annotated hits, wherein each additional annotated hit corresponds to a document in the corpus for which the store of annotations includes an associated annotation for which the creating user is one of the trust network members and 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.

28. The method of claim 27 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.

29. The method of claim 28 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.

30. The method of claim 1 wherein the store 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.

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

32. The method of claim 31 wherein the item of information is a rating of the associated document.

33. The method of claim 31 wherein the item of information is a keyword describing the associated document.

34. The method of claim 31 wherein the item of information is a label selected from a predefined vocabulary.

35. The method of claim 31 wherein the item of information is a description of the associated document.

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

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

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

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

receiving a query submitted by a querying one of a plurality of users;

building a trust network for the querying user, the trust network having as members a subset of the plurality of users including at least one user other than the querying user;

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

identifying one or more hits, wherein each hit is a document in the corpus that is determined to be relevant to the query and wherein each hit further is the subject document of at least one matching annotation, wherein the creating user of each matching annotation is one of the trust network members;

generating a search report including a listing of the hits; and

transmitting the search report to the querying user.

40. The method of claim 39 wherein the members of the trust network include at least one other user explicitly identified by the querying user as a friend.

41. The method of claim 39 wherein the members of the trust network are members of a selected community of users, the community being selected by the querying user.

42. The method of claim 39 wherein identifying the one or more hits includes comparing the query to contents of documents in the corpus.

43. The method of claim 39 wherein identifying one or more hits includes comparing the query to the user-specific metadata of annotations in a search pool of annotations for which the creating user is one of the trust network members.

44. The method of claim 43 wherein identifying one or more hits further includes:

extracting a search term from the query; and

detecting, for each of the annotations in the search pool, 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.

45. The method of claim 44 further comprising:

for each document that is the subject document of at least one of the annotations in the search pool, 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.

46. The method of claim 44 wherein the user-specific metadata includes a plurality of fields and wherein the query specifies which of the fields are to be considered during the act of detecting.

47. The method of claim 39 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 at least one of the matching annotations.

48. The method of claim 39 wherein the search report further includes, for each hit, at least some of the user-specific metadata from at least one of the matching annotations.

49. The method of claim 39 wherein the user-specific metadata included in each matching annotation includes a rating of the subject document and wherein the hits in the listing are placed in an order determined based at least in part on the ratings of the hits.

50. The method of claim 39 wherein the store 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.

51. The method of claim 39 wherein the corpus is the World Wide Web.

52. The method of claim 39 wherein the user is a human.

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

54. A computer system for responding to user queries from a plurality of users, the system comprising:

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

a personalization data store configured to store annotations, each annotation being associated with a subject one of the documents in the corpus and with a creating one of the plurality of users, each annotation including user-specific metadata related to the subject 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 one of the plurality of users;

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

trust network control logic configured to build a trust network for the querying user, the trust network having as members a subset of the plurality of users including at least one user other than the querying user;

personalization control logic configured to identify, as an annotated hit, each of the hits that is the subject document of at least one matching annotation, wherein the creating user of each matching annotation is one of the members of the trust network; and

reporting control logic configured to generate a search report including a listing of the hits, the search report further including, for each annotated hit, information about at least one of the matching annotations, the reporting control logic being further configured to transmit the search report to the querying user.

55. A computer system for responding to user queries from a plurality of users, the system comprising:

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

a personalization data store configured to store annotations, each annotation being associated with a subject one of the documents in the corpus and with a creating one of the plurality of users, each annotation including user-specific metadata related to the subject 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 one of the plurality of users;

trust network control logic configured to build a trust network for the querying user, the trust network having as members a subset of the plurality of users including at least one user other than the querying user;

search control logic configured to identify, as a hit, one or more of the documents from the corpus, wherein each hit is determined to be relevant to the query and wherein each hit further is the subject document of at least one matching annotation, wherein the creating user of each matching annotation is one of the trust network members; and

reporting control logic configured to generate a search report including a listing of the hits, the reporting control logic being further configured to transmit the search report to the user.