Mobile friendly internet searches

• US 20060212451A1
• Filed: 03/15/2005
• Published: 09/21/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Romatka, Rainer J., Hennessy, Tyler E., Brench, Neil A., Serdy, Frank S. Jr.
• Granted Patent: US 8,219,567 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/1737 for reducing power consumption or coping with limited storage space, e.g. in mobile devices saving storage space on storage devices G06F3/0608; power saving in storage systems G06F3/0625
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/31 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation

Abstract

Mobile friendly internet searches are enabled by determining if individual internet sites are mobile friendly. In a described implementation, a mobile-friendliness indication is determined for an internet site. The determined mobile-friendliness indication is stored in association with the internet site in an index that may be used for internet searching. In another described implementation, a data structure comprises an internet index with multiple internet site entries having one or more associated mobile-friendliness indications. The mobile-friendliness indications may be general affirmative indications of mobile friendliness or specific indications of mobile-friendliness that identify a specific user agent type. In yet another described implementation, a search request having search terms is received, and a search is performed based thereon to produce a search results set. If the search requestor is a mobile device, the search results are ordered responsive to mobile-friendliness indications associated with the internet sites of the search results set.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining a mobile-friendliness indication for a uniform resource locator (URL); and

storing the determined mobile-friendliness indication in association with the URL.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the storing comprises:

storing the determined mobile-friendliness indication in association with the URL in an network index.

3. The method as recited in claim 2, further comprising:

receiving a search request having at least one search term;

performing a search based on the at least one search term and using the network index to produce a set of search results including multiple URLs.

4. The method as recited in claim 3, further comprising:

determining if the search request originated from a mobile device;

if the search request is determined to have originated from a mobile device;

ordering the multiple URLs of the set of search results responsive to multiple respective mobile-friendliness indications associated with respective ones of the multiple URLs of the set of search results to produce a mobile-friendly set of search results; and

providing at least a portion of the mobile-friendly set of search results to the mobile device.

5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the determining comprises:

receiving a traditional response from the URL;

receiving an unknown response from the URL, the unknown response corresponding to a request made while impersonating a mobile-friendly user agent;

comparing the traditional response to the unknown response; and

determining the mobile-friendliness indication based on the comparing.

6. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the determining comprises:

requesting a response from the URL while impersonating a mobile-friendly user agent type;

ascertaining a markup language type of the response;

comparing the markup language type of the response to the mobile-friendly user agent type; and

determining the mobile-friendliness indication based on the comparing.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the determining comprises:

injecting a URL-relevant term that is applicable to a mobile-friendly user agent type into the URL to form a modified URL;

requesting a response from the URL using the modified URL;

examining the response received from the requesting; and

determining the mobile-friendliness indication based on the examining.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the determining comprises:

extracting at least one content characteristic from a response received from the URL;

analyzing the at least one content characteristic for mobile-friendliness; and

determining the mobile-friendliness indication based on the analyzing.

9. The method as recited in claim 8, wherein the analyzing comprises at least one of:

checking for a script or a frame in the response;

detecting a size of an image in the response;

or

detecting a total memory size of the response.

10. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the determining comprises:

determining a combined mobile-friendliness indication from multiple individual mobile-friendliness indications.

11. A method comprising:

receiving a search request having at least one search term from a search requestor;

performing a search based on the at least one search term to produce a set of search results including uniform resource locators (URLs);

determining if the search requester comprises a mobile device; and

if the search requester is determined to comprise a mobile device, ordering the set of search results responsive to mobile-friendliness indications associated with the URLs of the set of search results.

12. The method as recited in claim 11, further comprising:

if the search requestor is determined to comprise a mobile device, providing to the mobile device at least a portion of the set of search results as ordered responsive to the mobile-friendliness indications associated with the URLs of the set of search results.

13. The method as recited in claim 11, further comprising:

if the search requestor is not determined to comprise a mobile device, providing at least a portion of the set of search results as ordered using a standard relevance ranking algorithm.

14. The method as recited in claim 11, wherein the determining comprises:

inspecting a user agent string received from the search requestor.

15. The method as recited in claim 11, wherein the ordering comprises:

moving at least one URL of the set of search results to a higher ranking position if the at least one URL is associated with one or more mobile-friendliness indications.

16. One or more processor-accessible media comprising a data structure including multiple entries, each respective entry of the multiple entries comprising a respective uniform resource locator (URL) that is associated with one or more mobile-friendliness indications.

17. The one or more processor-accessible media as recited in claim 16, wherein the data structure comprises an internet index, and the URLs of the multiple entries correspond to websites of an internet.

18. The one or more processor-accessible media as recited in claim 16, wherein the data structure further includes at least one entry comprising a URL that is not associated with a mobile-friendliness indication.

19. The one or more processor-accessible media as recited in claim 16, wherein the multiple entries include a particular entry comprising a particular URL that is associated with a particular mobile-friendliness indication, the particular mobile-friendliness indication comprising a general affirmative indication of mobile-friendliness.

20. The one or more processor-accessible media as recited in claim 16, wherein the multiple entries include a particular entry comprising a particular URL that is associated with a particular mobile-friendliness indication, the particular mobile-friendliness indication comprising a specific indication of mobile-friendliness that identifies at least one specific user agent type.