USING RELATED USERS DATA TO ENHANCE WEB SEARCH

• US 20090204599A1
• Filed: 02/13/2008
• Published: 08/13/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/13/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Mickens, James W., Teevan, Jaime Brooks, Morris, Meredith June, Amershi, Saleema
• Granted Patent: US 8,244,721 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9032 Query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90335 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation

Abstract

The claimed subject matter provides a system and/or a method that facilitates generating a personalized query result for a specific user. An interface can receive at least one of a portion of a text query to be searched or a portion of personalized content related to a user that submits the portion of the text query. A personalization component can combine the portion of personalized content related to the user with a portion of personalized content related to one or more disparate users to create group personalized content, wherein the group personalized content is compared with the portion of the text query to identify a relationship there between to generate a personalized query result in accordance with the relationship.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates generating a personalized query result for a specific user, comprising:

an interface that receives at least one of a portion of a text query to be searched or a portion of personalized content related to a user that submits the portion of the text query; and

a personalization component that combines the portion of personalized content related to the user with a portion of personalized content related to one or more disparate users to create a group having group personalized content, the group personalized content is compared with the portion of the text query to identify a relationship there between to generate a personalized query result in accordance with the relationship.

2. The system of claim 1, the personalized content relates to at least one of a background, an interest, a portion of browsed content, a portion of Internet history, a portion of a user profile, a visited website, a questionnaire, a purchase, a shared task as established by joint participation in a search using a specialized collaborative web searching tool, a portion of data related to a social networking website, a specialized group search interface, a portion of desktop content related to a machine, or a shopping history.

3. The system of claim 1, the personalized content is user specific and is at least one of local data, remote data, data on a device, or data on a computing machine.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a search component that generates two or more query results based on the text query, the query results are filtered or ranked based on the relationship of the user and the group.

5. The system of claim 1, the personalization component employs a groupized ranking by at least one of the following:

calculating a personalization score for each member of the group and calculating a group score for each query result by combining the personalization score from each member, and re-ranking the query results based on the group score;

computing the group personalization score from a combination of the group member'"'"'s profiles and re-ranking the query results based on the group score;

or utilizing an algorithm to combine the personal score into the group score.

6. The system of claim 5, the personalization score for each member of the group is based upon relevancy to the individual member and respective personalization content.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a shared web task engine that provides a collaborative web search utilizing a smart splitting technique, the smart splitting technique receives the portion of the text query and distributes a portion of the query results to members of the group to enable parallel evaluation.

8. The system of claim 7, the portion of the query results are distributed as non-overlapping subsets in which the distribution is based on a personalized score for each member.

9. The system of claim 7, the shared web task engine implements a group query expansion that expands the portion of the text query based on evaluating a text query from the group, the expansion of the text query is dependent upon having a relationship there between in which the relationship is at least one of a semantic content, a time span of entry, or a manual inference.

10. The system of claim 9, the text query from the group is identified from a task session manually defined in at least one of the shared web task engine or the collaborative web search.

11. The system of claim 9, further comprising a highlighter component that employs an emphasis technique to a portion of the query result generated from the group query expansion search.

12. The system of claim 11, the emphasis technique is at least one of a text highlight, a magnification, a font, a bold, an underline, a pop-up, or a portion of a graphic.

13. The system of claim 11, the highlighter component utilizes a first emphasis technique for a first user and a second emphasis technique for a second user, the first user and the second user are members of the group.

14. The system of claim 1, further comprising a scope component that utilizes a confidence ranking for at least one member within the group, the confidence ranking defines a measurement of similarity between a first member and a second member within the group.

15. The system of claim 1, further comprising an edit component that defines a security setting for the user within the group, the security setting enables a portion of data to be excluded from consideration as personalized content.

16. The system of claim 15, the edit component allows the user to manually edit a portion of personalized content with a level of granularity.

17. A computer-implemented method that facilitates enhancing identification of relevant search results, comprising:

receiving a search query from a user;

evaluating a portion of data specific to the user to identify at least one additional user with related data there between;

identifying a correlation between the user, the at least one additional user, and the query;

generating one or more search results for the query; and

filtering the one or more search results based at least upon the correlation.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

aggregating the at least one additional user into a group;

providing a personalized score for the search result for each member in the group; and

utilizing the personalized score to re-rank the search results.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

implementing a shared web search for the search query;

identifying relevant results for a particular user based on the shared web search; and

utilizing a group hit highlighting on the relevant results for the search query.

20. A computer-implemented system that facilitates generating a query result relevant to a user, comprising:

means for receiving at least one of a portion of a text query to be searched or a portion of personalized content related to a user that submits the portion of the text query;

means for aggregating at least one additional user with the user that submits the text query into a group;

means for evaluating personalized content related to the at least one additional user and the user that submits the text query;

means for leveraging the group and the personalized content to provide a search result with at least one of the following;

a groupized ranking that calculates a personalized ranking of the search result for each member of the group and combines the personalized ranking to provide a group score;

a smart splitting that distributes the search results to the group for parallel evaluation; and

a group query expansion that broadens the text query by evaluating related queries generated by a member of the group.