SEARCH RESULT DELIVERY ENGINE

• US 20070250501A1
• Filed: 02/02/2007
• Published: 10/25/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Looksmart, Ltd (Looksmart Group, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Looksmart, Ltd (Looksmart Group, Inc.)
• Inventors: Grubb, Michael, Ago, Ledio
• Application Number:
  US11/670,904
• Publication Number:
  US 20070250501A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/325 Hash tables
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3343 using phonetics
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

A method of delivering search results may include segmenting a query to obtain one or more word groups, such as nGrams, analyzing each word group to determine a degree of relatedness between that word group and a group of Internet websites related to each other by a common factor, for example by matching hash tables of bigrams, and applying each word group to a secondary index of words in the group of related websites to produce a set of search results which may be combined with another set of search results for the searcher.

Claims

1. A method of delivering search results, comprising:

applying a query from a searcher to a primary index of words on Internet websites to produce a first set of search results;

segmenting the query to obtain one or more word groups, each word group including a predetermined number of words;

analyzing each word group to determine a degree of relatedness between that word group and a group of Internet websites related to each other by a common factor;

applying each word group to a secondary index of words in the group of related websites, if that word group has a predetermined level of relatedness to the group of related websites, to produce a second set of search results; and

combining the first and second set of search results to produce a combined set of search results for the searcher.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the common factor is related to subject matter common to the group of related websites.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein analyzing each word group to determine a degree of relatedness between that word group and a group of Internet websites related to each other by a common factor further comprises:

comparing the word group to the secondary index of the related group of websites.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the common factor among the group of related websites is that each of the common websites is primarily news website.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein segmenting the query to obtain one or more word groups further comprises:

identifying a pattern including the predetermined number of words.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein identifying a pattern including the predetermined number of words further comprises:

identifying an order in which the predetermined number of words appear in the query.

8. The method of claim 6 further comprising:

segmenting text associated with each website in the group of related websites into word groups having the same number of predetermined words to form the secondary index.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein segmenting text associated with each website into word groups having the same number of predetermined words to form the secondary index

identifying a pattern in an order of appearance of the predetermined number of words.

5. The method of clam 3 wherein analyzing each word group to determine a degree of relatedness between that word group and a group of Internet websites related to each other by a common factor further comprises:

determining the timeliness of the word group with respect to current news by determining if the word group is present in news provided on a substantial number of the news websites in the group during a predetermined time period before the word group is analyzed.

10. A method of delivering search results, comprising:

segmenting a query into one or more nGrams, each nGrams having n words appearing in a predetermined sequence;

forming a table of nGrams appearing in at least one group of websites; and

providing a search result set in response to the query from the at least one group of websites if the query nGrams have a sufficient match to the nGrams of the at least one group of websites.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein n is equal to two.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein forming a table of nGrams appearing in at least one group of websites further comprises:

matching hash tables of the query nGrams to hash tables of the n-grams of the at least one group of websites.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein matching hash tables further comprises:

maintaining hash tables for nGrams of the at least one group of websites.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein maintaining hash table further comprises:

analyzing the at least one group of websites to identify nGram patterns;

forming an index of the nGram patterns; and

maintaining a hash table of the index of nGram patterns.

15. The method of claim 10 providing a search result set in response to the query from the at least one group of websites if the query nGrams have a sufficient match to the nGrams of the at least one group of websites further comprises:

determining the relatedness of the query nGrams to nGrams of each of the plurality of groups of websites; and

providing search results from each of the plurality of groups of websites having a predetermined level of relatedness between nGrams of that groups of websites and the query nGrams.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the predetermined level of relatedness is different between different ones of the plurality of groups of websites.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the websites within each of the plurality of groups of websites are related to each other by a common factor.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the common factor in one of the predetermined groups of websites is that each such websites is a news website.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the predetermined level of relatedness is related to how recently the nGrams appeared in each such news website.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein the common factor in one of the predetermined groups of websites is that each such websites is a travel or financial data website.