Dispersing search engine results by using page category information

• US 20060004717A1
• Filed: 07/01/2004
• Published: 01/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Shakib, Darren A., Hullender, Gregory N., Hamilton, Nicole A., Ramarathnam, Bama
• Granted Patent: US 7,428,530 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: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99937 Sorting

Abstract

Systems and methods for dispersing search engine results by category. A search engine application queries a searchable index of document data associated with a plurality of electronic documents in response to a search request to identify one or more electronic documents having document data matching data included in the search request. The search engine application disperses identified electronic documents according to category data included in the document data for display to a user.

Claims

1. A method of generating search results comprising:

receiving a search request from a user;

querying a searchable index as a function of the received search request to identify electronic documents that may be relevant to the search request, said index containing document data associated with a plurality of electronic documents, said document data specifying one or more categories associated with each of the electronic documents;

sorting the results of said querying as a function of the one or more categories associated with the identified electronic documents; and

displaying the sorted results to the user such that one or more of the identified electronic documents in different categories are displayed to the user on a single page.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the document data includes a ranking value associated with each of the electronic documents relative to the one or more categories, said ranking value being stored in the index and indicating a relevance of a particular electronic document to a particular category, and wherein displaying includes displaying a predetermined number of identified electronic documents in each of the different categories as a function of the ranking values.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein displaying includes displaying the sorted results as a function of both a total number of different categories and the ranking value for each of the identified electronic documents in each of the different categories.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the displaying includes displaying the sorted results in groups, each group corresponding to a particular category, and each group listing a description of the identified electronic documents in the particular category in a descending order based on the ranking value associated with each of the identified electronic documents in the particular category.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein each of the electronic documents comprises one or more of the following:

a web page and a multimedia file.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein querying the searchable index further includes querying a third party data source to retrieve advertising data related to the different categories, and wherein displaying the sorted results further includes displaying the retrieved advertising data relative to the different categories of the identified electronic documents.

7. A computer-readable medium comprising computer-executable instructions for generating search results, comprising:

a search form component for receiving a search request from a user;

a search engine component for querying a searchable index as a function of the received search request to identify electronic documents that may be relevant to the search request and for sorting the results of said querying, said index containing document data associated with a plurality of electronic documents, said document data specifying one or more categories associated with each of the electronic documents, said results being sorted as a function of the one or more categories associated with the identified electronic documents; and

a user interface component for displaying the sorted results to the user such that one or more of the identified electronic documents in different categories are displayed to the user on a single page.

8. The computer readable medium of claim 7, wherein the document data includes a ranking value associated with each of the electronic documents relative to the one or more categories, said ranking value being stored in the index and indicating a relevance of a particular electronic document to a particular category, and wherein the user interface component is configured to display a predetermined number of identified electronic documents in each of the different categories as a function of the ranking values.

9. The computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein the user interface component is further configured to display the sorted results as a function of both a total number of different categories and the ranking value for each of the identified electronic documents in each of the different categories.

10. The computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein the user interface component is further configured to display the sorted results in groups, each group corresponding to a particular category, and each group listing a description of the identified electronic documents in the particular category in a descending order based on the ranking value associated with each of the identified electronic documents in the particular category.

11. The computer readable medium of claim 7, wherein the search engine component is further configured to query a third party data source to retrieve advertising data related to the different categories, and wherein the user interface component is further configured to display the retrieved advertising data relative to the different categories of the identified electronic documents.

12. A system for generating search results in response to a search request received from a user, said user generating the search request via a client, said system comprising:

a first server for receiving the search request from the user via the client, said first server being coupled to the client via a communication network;

an index containing document data associated with a plurality of electronic documents, said document data specifying one or more categories associated with each of the electronic documents; and

wherein said first server is configured to query the index as a function of the received search request to identify electronic documents that may be relevant to the search request and to sort the results of said query, said results being sorted as a function of the one or more categories associated with the identified electronic documents for displaying to the user at the client such that one or more of the identified electronic documents in different categories are displayed to the user on a single page.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the document data includes a ranking value associated with each of the electronic documents relative to the one or more categories, said ranking value being stored in the index and indicating a relevance of a particular electronic document to a particular category, and wherein a predetermined number of identified electronic documents in each of the different categories are displayed as a function of the ranking values.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the sorted results are displayed as a function of both a total number of different categories and the ranking value for each of the identified electronic documents in each of the different categories.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the sorted results are displayed in groups, each group corresponding to a particular category, and each group listing a description of the identified electronic documents in the particular category in a descending order based on the ranking value associated with each of the identified electronic documents in the particular category.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein the first server is configured to provide a web form to the client for receiving the search request from the user.

17. The system of claim 12, wherein the first server is further configured to query a third party data source to retrieve advertising data related to the different categories, and wherein the retrieved advertising data is displayed relative to the different categories of the identified electronic documents.

18. The system of claim 12, wherein the document data included in the index is partitioned and transferred to a plurality of sub-indexes for storage, each of said plurality of sub-indexes being maintained on a plurality of affiliate servers, and wherein the first server is responsive to the received search request to query at least one of the said plurality of sub-indexes to identify one or more electronic documents within different categories.

19. One or more computer-readable media having stored thereon a searchable data structure comprising:

a first field for storing data representing a search engine index term associated with an electronic document located on a network, said index term being included in the electronic document;

a second field for storing data representing a category associated with the electronic document;

a third field for storing data representing a location of the electronic document on the network; and

wherein the document data included in the second field is indexed according to the first field such that one or more categories are associated with the index term, and wherein document data included in the third field is indexed according to the second field such that one or more locations of the electronic documents are associated with each of the one or more categories.

20. The computer-readable media of claim 19, wherein the data structure further includes a fourth field representing a ranking value associated with the electronic document, said ranking value indicating a relevance of a particular electronic document to a particular category, and wherein document data included in the fourth field is indexed according to the third field such that one or more ratings are associated with each electronic document the associated with the particular category.

21. The computer-readable media of claim 19, wherein an application is configured to receive a search request to search the index to determine if the index term stored in the first field matches query data specified in the received search request, wherein, if the index term stored in the first field matches the query data, the application is further configured to identify the corresponding category specified in the second field and to identify the corresponding document location stored in the third field, and wherein the application provides search results including identified document locations to the user, and wherein said search results are grouped by category.

22. The computer-readable media of claim 21, wherein the data structure further includes a fifth field representing a summary description associated with the known electronic document, and wherein the grouped search results provided to the user by the application include the summary description associated with the electronic document.

23. The computer-readable media of claim 19, wherein the document data further includes one or more of the following:

data in hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) header, meta tag, extensible markup language (XML) data, and resource description framework (RDF) data.