Discovering web-based multimedia using search toolbar data

• US 20070136263A1
• Filed: 12/14/2005
• Published: 06/14/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Williams, Hugh
• Granted Patent: US 7,827,191 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3326 using relevance feedback from the user, e.g. relevance feedback on documents, documents sets, document terms or passages
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Toolbar search data is utilized to facilitate search engine crawlers to locate resources on a network such as, for example, multimedia resources on the Internet. In one instance, for example, users who opt into a user feedback experience have their toolbar searches relayed to a toolbar data mining component which augments a multimedia crawler in locating the multimedia resources. A media inspection component is then employed to determine the content of the media resource and, when appropriate, the media resource is then indexed for utilization in search engine indexing nodes and the like. This allows resources, for example, such as multimedia resources, that are typically undiscoverable by search engine crawlers to be located and indexed for searching.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates discovery of resources on a network, comprising:

a receiving component that receives network search data from a network search toolbar data source; and

a mining component that mines the network search toolbar data to discover resource information on a network.

2. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

an inspection component that determines if the discovered resource information contains unique resources that can be indexed and/or searched by a search engine.

3. The system of claim 2 further comprising:

an indexing and statistical component that extracts resource metadata, collates access statistics, and/or relays information to a search engine for indexing and/or querying.

4. The system of claim 1, the network comprising a global network and/or a local network.

5. The system of claim 1, the mining component mines multimedia resource information.

6. The system of claim 1, the mining component mines the network search toolbar data for information utilized in a search engine crawler and/or in a search engine ranking scheme.

7. The system of claim 1 further comprising:

a search engine crawler that filters discovered resource information to determine unique resources and/or retrieves a discovered resource to allow inspection of the discovered resource.

20. A device employing the system of claim 1 comprising at least one selected from the group consisting of a computer, a server, and a handheld electronic device.

8. A method for facilitating resource discovery from a network, comprising:

receiving network search data from a network search toolbar data source; and

extracting resource information from the network search toolbar data to facilitate in discovering unique resources on a network.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

employing the extracted resource information to facilitate in queuing a search engine crawler based on toolbar metrics.

10. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

utilizing the extracted resource information to facilitate in ranking search results of a search engine.

11. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

inspecting resources from the discovered resource information to locate unique resources that can be indexed and/or searched by a search engine;

extracting resource metadata for unique resources;

collating access statistics for the unique resources; and

relaying the metadata and/or collated access statistics to a search engine for indexing and/or querying.

12. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

determining if a uniform resource locator (URL) represents a multimedia resource by comparing URL extensions and/or identifying keywords.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising:

determining if the URL has been previously seen via comparison to a list of previously visited and/or currently indexed URLs of a search engine.

14. The method of claim 13 further comprising:

queuing a URL for a new multimedia resource for retrieval by a multimedia crawler and retrieving it at the appropriate time.

15. The method of claim 14 further comprising:

inspecting the retrieved multimedia resource to determine if it is a desired multimedia resource via examination of its preamble and comparing it to a list of multimedia preambles.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising:

extracting features from a desired multimedia resource and/or statistics about the desired multimedia resource.

17. The method of claim 16 further comprising:

relaying multimedia resource metadata to a search engine for indexing and/or querying.

19. A device employing the method of claim 8 comprising at least one selected from the group consisting of a computer, a server, and a handheld electronic device.

18. A system that facilitates multimedia resource discovery from a network, comprising:

means for receiving network search data from a network search toolbar data source; and

means for mining the network search toolbar data to discover multimedia resources on a network.