Systems, methods, and media for utilizing electronic document usage information with search engines

• US 20060173818A1
• Filed: 01/11/2005
• Published: 08/03/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 01/11/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Forlenza, Randolph Michael, Berstis, Viktors
• Granted Patent: US 7,421,426 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 16/953 Querying, e.g. by the use of web search engines
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

Systems, methods and media for utilizing electronic document usage information are disclosed. More particularly, hardware and/or software utilizing electronic document usage information to respond to user search requests with search engines are disclosed. Embodiments include receiving a search request from a requesting user and receiving document utilization information associated with one or more electronic documents, where the document utilization information provides an indication of the usage of the electronic documents by one or more users. Further embodiments include generating search results based at least partially on the search request and the document utilization information and transmitting an indication of the search results to the requesting user. Further embodiments include generating statistical information regarding the search results for electronic documents and transmitting the generated statistical information.

Claims

1. A method for utilizing document utilization information, the method comprising:

receiving a search request from a requesting user;

receiving document utilization information associated with one or more electronic documents, the document utilization information providing an indication of the usage of electronic documents by one or more users;

generating search results based at least partially on the search request and the received document utilization information; and

transmitting an indication of the search results to the requesting user.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising archiving the received document utilization information.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating statistical information regarding search results for electronic documents; and

transmitting the generated statistical information.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving keywords associated with one or more electronic documents; and

wherein generating search results based at least partially on the search request and the received document utilization information comprises generating search results based at least partially on the search request, the received document utilization information, and the received keywords.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the search request comprises one or more keywords.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving document utilization information comprises receiving document utilization information relating to a plurality of electronic documents.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving document utilization information comprises receiving information relating to the number of users who have accessed particular sections of the electronic document.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving document utilization information comprises receiving information relating to the amount of time that users have accessed particular sections of the electronic document.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving document utilization information comprises receiving information relating to bookmarks in an electronic document created by users.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the search results comprise a plurality of network links to electronic documents.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the search results comprise portions of the contents of electronic documents where keywords were found.

12. A machine-accessible medium containing instructions effective, when executing in a data processing system, to cause said data processing system to perform operations comprising:

receiving a search request from a requesting user;

receiving document utilization information for one or more electronic documents, the document utilization information providing an indication of the usage of electronic documents by one or more users;

generating search results based at least partially on the search request and the received document utilization information; and

transmitting an indication of the search results to the requesting user.

13. The machine-accessible medium of claim 12, further comprising archiving the received document utilization information.

14. The machine-accessible medium of claim 12, further comprising:

generating statistical information regarding search results for electronic documents; and

transmitting the generated statistical information.

15. The machine-accessible medium of claim 12, further comprising:

receiving keywords associated with one or more electronic documents; and

wherein generating search results based at least partially on the search request and the received document utilization information comprises generating search results based at least partially on the search request, the received document utilization information, and the received keywords.

16. A data processing system, the system comprising:

a user communications module for receiving a search request from a user and for transmitting search results to the user;

an aggregator server communications module for receiving, from an aggregator server, document utilization information associated with one or more electronic documents; and

a search algorithm module, the search algorithm module being adapted to generate search results based on the search request received from the user and the received document utilization information.

17. The system of claim 16, further comprising a spider module, the spider module being adapted to search network sites for content.

18. The system of claim 16, further comprising an indexer module, the indexer module being adapted to analyze content of network sites for keywords.

19. The system of claim 16, further comprising a memory module, the memory module being adapted to store document utilization information associated with one or more electronic documents.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the search request comprises one or more keywords.