Techniques for Targeting Information to Users

• US 20080005102A1
• Filed: 07/05/2007
• Published: 01/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/22/1997
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Ricoh Company Limited
• Inventors: Graham, Jamey, Piersol, Kurt, Hart, Peter, Hull, Jonathan
• Granted Patent: US 8,438,164 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/913 Multimedia
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/922 Communications
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

Techniques for providing relevant information to a user based on information or documents accessed or viewed by the user. The relevant information is provided automatically to the user without requiring user input. The information provided to the user is selected from information provided by various content provider systems. The present invention uses several techniques to determine relevancy between the contents of the document accessed by the user and between the information provided by the content provider systems. The relevancy information is used to select information to be provided to the user.

Claims

1. A method of providing information to a user based upon contents of a first document displayed to the user, the method comprising:

identifying the first document displayed to the user;

identifying at least a first section of the first document;

extracting a first set of information objects from the first section of the first document;

determining degree of relevancy information for a second set of information objects, the degree of relevancy information indicating the relevancy of information objects in the second set of information objects to information objects in the first set of information objects; and

selecting a third set of information objects from information objects in the second set of information objects based upon the degree of relevancy information determined for information objects in the second set of information objects, wherein information objects in the third set of information objects store information to be output to the user when the first document is being displayed to the user.