Search engine for a computer network

• US 20060136378A1
• Filed: 12/17/2004
• Published: 06/22/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/17/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Gula Consulting Limited Liability Company (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: Claria Corporation
• Inventors: Martin, Anthony G.
• Granted Patent: US 8,078,602 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 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results

Abstract

In one embodiment, client-side programs are employed to observe the navigation of consumers to various websites. Addresses of web pages viewed by consumers may be used to fetch the web pages. A fetched web page may be parsed for one or more keywords. The relevance of the web page to a keyword may be ranked according to consumer preferences, which may relate to consumer interaction with the web page. Web pages and their ranking information may be stored in an index. The index may be consulted to find links to web pages relevant to a keyword employed in a search request.

Claims

1. A method of responding to a search request, the method comprising:

using client-side programs to monitor navigation of consumers on the Internet;

building a search engine index using navigation data from the client-side programs;

receiving a search request for a keyword; and

sifting through the index to find links to web pages responsive to the keyword.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the navigation data include addresses of web pages viewed by consumers, and wherein the index contains links to the web pages viewed by consumers.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the links to the web pages viewed by consumers in the index are ranked based on consumer preferences.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

using the client-side programs to monitor consumer preferences.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the consumer preferences include information on the number of consumers who viewed a particular web page.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein the consumer preferences include information on the amount of time consumers spend viewing a particular web page.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein building the search engine index comprises:

determining a web page viewed by a consumer;

fetching the web page viewed by the consumer;

parsing the fetched web page; and

storing the parsed web page in the index.

8. A search engine comprising:

a crawler configured to receive addresses viewed by consumers as observed by client-side programs and to fetch the viewed web pages;

an indexer configured to parse web pages fetched by the crawler and to store links to the fetched web pages in an index; and

a sifter configured to sift through the index to find a stored link relevant to a keyword employed in a search request.

9. The search engine of claim 8 wherein the indexer is further configured to rank parsed web pages based on consumer preferences.

10. The search engine of claim 9 wherein the consumer preferences include information on the number of consumers who viewed a particular web page.

11. The search engine of claim 9 wherein the consumer preferences include information on the amount of time consumers spend viewing a particular web page.

12. The search engine of claim 8 wherein the crawler is further configured to fetch web pages associated with a web page having an address received from one of the client-side programs.

13. The search engine of claim 12 wherein the adjacent web pages include a web page one level above or one level below the web page having an address received from one of the client-side programs.

14. A method of responding to a search request, the method comprising:

observing navigation of consumers to websites to generate navigation data;

using the navigation data to build an index for a search engine;

receiving a keyword as part of a search request; and

responding to the search request by searching the index for links to web pages relevant to the keyword.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the navigation data includes addresses of web pages viewed by consumers.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein client-side programs are employed to observe the navigation of the consumers.

17. The method of claim 14 wherein the keyword is received over the Internet.

18. The method of claim 14 wherein links relevant to the keyword are ranked in the index according to consumer preferences.

19. The method of claim 14 wherein using the navigation data to build the index comprises:

fetching web pages having addresses included in the navigation data;

parsing the fetched web pages for a keyword;

ranking the relevance of the parsed web page to the keyword; and

storing ranking information and a link to the parsed web page in the index.

20. The method of claim 19 further comprising:

fetching a web page adjacent to another web page having an address included in the navigation data.