Search systems and methods with integration of aggregate user annotations
First Claim
1. A method for responding to a user query, the method comprising:
- accessing a store of annotations created by a plurality of annotating users, each annotation being associated with one of the annotating users and with one of a plurality of documents belonging to a corpus, each annotation including user-specific metadata related to the associated document;
aggregating, across the plurality of annotating users, one or more items of user-specific metadata related to the same one of the documents, thereby generating one or more aggregate attributes for the document;
receiving a query submitted by a querying user;
searching the corpus to identify one or more hits, 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, wherein the listing is based at least in part on at least one of the aggregate attributes of the hits; and
transmitting the search report to the querying user.
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Accused Products
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.
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Citations
21 Claims
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1. A method for responding to a user query, the method comprising:
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accessing a store of annotations created by a plurality of annotating users, each annotation being associated with one of the annotating users and with one of a plurality of documents belonging to a corpus, each annotation including user-specific metadata related to the associated document;
aggregating, across the plurality of annotating users, one or more items of user-specific metadata related to the same one of the documents, thereby generating one or more aggregate attributes for the document;
receiving a query submitted by a querying user;
searching the corpus to identify one or more hits, 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, wherein the listing is based at least in part on at least one of the aggregate attributes of the hits; and
transmitting the search report to the querying user. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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21. A computer system for responding to user queries, the system comprising:
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an index data store configured to store a searchable representation of a corpus comprising a plurality of documents;
a personalization data store configured to store annotations created by a plurality of annotating users, each annotation being associated with one of the documents in the corpus, each annotation including user-specific metadata related to that document;
an aggregation module communicably coupled to the personalization data store and the index data store, the aggregation module being configured to aggregate, across the plurality of annotating users, one or more items of user-specific metadata related to one of the documents, thereby generating one or more aggregate attributes for the document, and to store each of the aggregate attributes for the document in the index data store; and
a search module communicably coupled to the index data store and the personalization data store, the search module including;
input control logic configured to receive a query submitted by a querying user;
search control logic configured to search the index data store and to identify one or more hits, wherein each hit is a document in the corpus that is determined to be relevant to the query; and
reporting control logic configured to generate a search report including a listing of the hits, the listing based at least in part on the aggregate attributes of the hits, the reporting control logic being further configured to transmit the search report to the querying user.
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Specification