Using Previous User Search Query To Target Advertisements

• US 20090006207A1
• Filed: 06/25/2008
• Published: 01/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Datar, Mayur, Bayardo, Roberto J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,380,563 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/14.540
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0256 User search
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement

Abstract

A system and method to target advertisements to a user search query using a previously entered user search query as well as the current search query. The previously entered search query can accompanying the current search query in a query referrer, or can be determined separately from the current search query. The relevance of the previous search query is determined with respect to the current search query, and if found relevant a combination of the two query terms is used to find a set of advertising keywords from which candidate advertisements to be targeted and served to the user with search results are found. The process can be extended to additional search queries.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving at a search server current search query from a user;

receiving a referrer associated with the received current search query, the referrer including information identifying a previous search query from the user;

determining the relevance of the previous search query to the current search query;

mapping the current search query to at least one advertising keyword based on at least the current search query and the relevance of the previous search query to the current search query;

selecting at least one advertisement using the advertising keyword; and

,

delivering the at least one advertisement to the user with the results of the current search query.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

analyzing the current query and previous query using at least one of an overlapping words analysis, a query term summation analysis and a real time query broadening analysis to derive advertising keyword.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining step further comprises disambiguating advertising keywords associated with the current search query based on advertising keywords relevant to the current search query that are associated with the previous search query.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

retaining the results of the mapping step between the current search query and the previous search query;

receiving a next search query from the user,

receiving a referrer associated with the next search query, the referrer including information identifying the current search query;

determining the relevance of the current search query to the next search query;

determining the relevance of the previous search query to the next search query;

mapping the next search query to at least one advertising keyword based on at least the next search query, the relevance of the current search query to the next search query, and the relevance of the previous search query to the next search query;

selecting at least one advertisement using the advertising keyword; and

,

delivering the at least one advertisement to the user with the results of the next search query.

5. A system for providing targeted advertisements to a user, comprising:

a search server on a network for receiving a search queries via a standard communications protocol and serving search query results in response to the search queries, the search query results associated with at least one advertisement;

a first search query associated with a user transmitted in the standard communications protocol to the search server;

a second search query associated with the user transmitted to the search server in the standard communications protocol, including information identifying the first search query; and

,

an advertising server including;

a keyword engine for determining potential second search query advertising keywords associated with the second search query received from the search server,

a disambiguation engine for refining the potential advertising keywords associated with the second search query by determining potential advertising keywords associated with the first search query that are relevant to the second search query to find a set of refined advertising keywords, and

an advertisement serving engine for selecting and providing advertisements associated with the refined advertising keywords for in association with the second search query results.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising:

a third search query associated with a user transmitted in the standard communications protocol to the search server, for which the keyword engine determines a set of potential third search query advertising keywords; and

,

the disambiguation engine further comprising;

a memory for retaining advertising keywords previously found in the disambiguation engine for the first search query and second search query, said disambiguation engine refining the potential third search query advertising keywords using keywords associated with the third search query, advertising keywords associated with the second search query that are relevant to the third search query, and advertising keywords retained in memory that are associated with at least one of the first search query and the second search query and that are relevant to the third search query.

7. The system of claim 5, further comprising an keyword filtering engine in the disambiguation engine for finding advertising keywords from the current query and the previous query, the keyword filtering engine including at least one of an overlapping words analysis engine, a query term summation engine, and a real time query broadening engine.

8. A method comprising:

receiving a current search query from a user;

receiving information identifying a previous search query from the user;

determining the relevance of the previous search query to the current search query;

mapping the current search query to at least one advertising keyword based on at least the current search query and the relevance of the previous search query to the current search query;

selecting at least one advertisement using the advertising keyword; and

,

delivering the at least one advertisement to the user with the results of the current search query.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

analyzing the current query and previous query using at least one of an overlapping words analysis, a query term summation analysis and a real time query broadening analysis to derive advertising keyword.