Method and apparatus for categorizing and presenting documents of a distributed database

• US 20060265400A1
• Filed: 04/28/2006
• Published: 11/23/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/24/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Savich, Peter, Ryan, Paul T., Fain, Daniel C.
• Granted Patent: US 7,792,818 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/353 into predefined classes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure

Abstract

Described herein are methods for creating categorized documents, categorizing documents in a distributed database and categorizing Resulting Pages. Also described herein is an apparatus for searching a distributed database. The method for creating categorized documents generally comprises: initially assuming all documents are of type 1; filtering out all type 2 documents and placing them in a first category; filtering out all type 3 documents and placing them in a second category; and defining all remaining documents as type 4 documents and placing all type 4 documents in a third category. The apparatus for searching a distributed database generally comprises at least one memory device; a computing apparatus; an indexer; a transactional score generator; and a category assignor; a search server; and a user interface in communication with the search server.

Claims

1. A search engine and database for a distributed database, comprising:

at least one memory device, comprising,

at least one Internet cache; and

an Internet index;

a computing apparatus, comprising,

a crawler in communication with the Internet cache and an Internet;

an indexer in communication with the Internet index and the at least one Internet cache;

a transactional score generator in communication with the Internet cache; and

a category assignor in communication with the Internet cache;

a search server in communication with the Internet cache, the Internet index; and

a user interface in communication with the search server.

2. A search engine and database for a distributed database, as claimed in claim 1, wherein the Internet cache is at least approximately 30 terabytes.

3. A search engine and database for a distributed database, as claimed in claim 1, wherein the Internet index is at least approximately 5 terabytes.

4. A method for searching a distributed database, comprising:

(a) entering search terms or phrases into a system;

(b) generating documents containing keywords that match the search terms or phrases;

(c) categorizing search results into categories according to categorization criteria to create categorized documents; and

(d) presenting the categorized documents.

5. A method for searching a distributed database, as claimed in claim 4, wherein Categorization Criteria are selected by a user.

6. A method for searching a distributed database, as claimed in claim 5, wherein the categories are selected by a user.

7. A method for searching a distributed database, as claimed in claim 6, wherein Categorization Criteria are selected using steps comprising:

manual-seeding the system with pre-selected documents; and

repeating the steps of claim 4 while varying the categorization criteria of step (b) during each iteration until the categorized documents are categorized into the categories approximately as desired.

8. A method for searching a distributed database, as claimed in claim 4, further comprising selecting display preferences, wherein the display preferences effect how the categorized documents are presented in step (d).

9. A method for categorizing documents in a distributed database to create categorized documents, the method comprising:

initially assuming all documents are of type 1;

filtering out all type 2 documents and placing them in a first category;

filtering out all type 3 documents and placing them in a second category; and

defining all remaining documents as type 4 documents and placing all type 4 documents in a third category.

10. A method for categorizing documents in a distributed database, as claimed in claim 9, wherein the documents are pages and the distributed database is the Internet.

11. A method for categorizing a plurality of Resulting Pages into categories, comprising:

determining whether each of the plurality of Resulting Page is a spam page;

determining a quality score q(wi) for each of the plurality of Resulting Pages;

determining a transactional rating τ

(w_i) for each of the plurality of Resulting Pages;

deriving a propagation matrix P;

determining a commercial score κ

for each of the plurality of Resulting Pages;

filtering out all spam-inclusive commercial pages from the plurality of Resulting Pages;

filtering out all spam pages from the spam-inclusive commercial pages;

placing all commercial pages in a commercial category; and

placing all remaining Resulting Pages into an information category.

12. A method for categorizing documents in a distributed database, comprising:

assuming all documents in the distributed database are non-commercial in nature;

filtering out all documents that are commercial in nature from the documents, wherein the documents that are commercial in nature are commercial documents; and

creating sales leads from the commercial documents.

13. A method for categorizing documents in a distributed database, as claimed in claim 12, wherein filtering out all the commercial documents comprises placing all the commercial documents into a first category.

14. A method for categorizing documents in a distributed database, as claimed in claim 13, further comprising after placing all the documents that are commercial in nature into a first category, filtering out existing advertiser client pages from the commercial pages in the first category wherein the commercial pages remaining in the first category are lead pages.

15. A method for categorizing documents in a distributed database, as claimed in claim 13, wherein creating sales leads from the commercial documents comprises creating sales leads from the lead pages, wherein creating leads from the lead pages comprises:

gathering contact information for the lead pages; and

providing a list of the lead pages and the contact information.