Difference control for generating and displaying a difference result set from the result sets of a plurality of search engines

• US 20070100822A1
• Filed: 10/31/2005
• Published: 05/03/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/31/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lee, Tony, Ciemiewicz, David, Karmirantzos, Apostolos, Simpson, David, Schectman, Hal, Reinhold, James, Makris, Gregory, Freeman, Jackie
• Granted Patent: US 7,747,614 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90335 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for generating and displaying the difference between a primary result set and a secondary result set. According to the present invention, a method for displaying the difference between a primary result set and a secondary result set for a query comprises generating a primary result set and a secondary result set, the primary result set and secondary result set generated according to one or more respective disparate search algorithms. A difference result set is determined according to a difference between items in the primary result set and second result set, which is displayed to a user.

Claims

1. A method for influencing a result of a search algorithm in generating a result set, the method comprising:

receiving a primary result set and a secondary result set in response to a search query, the primary result set and secondary result set each comprising one or more items;

determining a difference between the one or more items in the primary result set and the one or more items in the secondary result set for storage as a difference result set;

selecting an item in the difference result set; and

storing an indication of the selected item for use in influencing items contained in a result set.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the primary result set comprises a first search engine generating the primary result set and a second search engine generating the secondary result set.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein generating the primary result and the secondary result set comprises generating the primary result set according to a first search algorithm and generating the secondary result set according to a second search algorithm.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein determining the difference result set comprises determining the difference according to URL matching.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein determining the difference comprises:

crawling one or more pages identified by one or more items in the primary result set and the secondary result set to determine one or more page signatures;

comparing the one or more page signatures to determine a duplicate page; and

eliminating the duplicate page from the difference result set.

6. The method of claim 1 comprising eliciting feedback from a user regarding the selection of the item in the difference result set.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the primary result set and the secondary result comprises conducting a search for items of audio content.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the primary result set and the secondary result comprises conducting a search for items of video content.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving the primary result set and the secondary result comprises conducting a search for items of image content.

10. The method of claim 1 comprising:

computing the primary result set and the secondary result set in advance of a receipt of a user query; and

storing the primary result set and the secondary result set on a data storage device.

11. A method of displaying a difference between one or more result sets generated in response to a query, the method comprising:

generating a primary result set and a secondary result set, the primary result set and secondary result set generated according to one or more respective disparate search algorithms;

determining a difference result set according to a difference between items in the primary result set and the secondary result set; and

displaying the difference result set to a user.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein displaying comprises displaying in response to selecting a difference button control by a user.

13. The method of claim 11 comprising displaying a difference button to a user, the selection of which initiates display of the difference result set.

14. The method of claim 13 comprising:

determining if the user is a registered user; and

if the user is a registered user, displaying the difference button.

15. The method of claim 13 comprising:

retrieving a past observed behavior of the user; and

displaying the difference button on the basis of the past observed behavior.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein retrieving the past observed behavior comprises retrieving the past observed behavior from a profile for the user.