WEB BROWSER ACCESSIBLE SEARCH ENGINE WITH STATISTICS GATHERING PERSISTENCE

• US 20090282000A1
• Filed: 02/10/2009
• Published: 11/12/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/12/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Inventors: Bennett, James D.
• Granted Patent: US 9,053,188 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation

Abstract

A search engine server interacts with a client devices and web servers to enhance the quality of search service based on statistics that are gathered by the system. The search engine server monitors the quality of service and data format (i.e. encoding needed for secured delivery) of search results or searched web pages delivered from the web servers. On the client side, the system generates page content usefulness statistics by monitoring user interaction with search results or web pages on the client device. Each of the visited web pages/links is associated with a vectoring event, and a vector event table is constructed using these vectoring events from all the visited web pages or search results. The vectoring event table from several search sessions are retrieved periodically, and used to compute/evaluate statistics for each of the web servers that host web pages.

Claims

1. A system that supports searching of web content in one or more web servers, the Internet infrastructure comprising:

a communication interface;

memory; and

processing circuitry coupled to the communication interface and to the memory to create a search engine server adapted to be communicatively coupled to receive input information, the processing circuitry, memory, and communication interface operable coupled to comprise the following;

a session configuration module that is part of the search engine server for outputting information from the search engine server to configure devices to track user interaction with search results while performing search operations; and

a session tracking module that is part of the search engine server for receiving information from external to the search engine server that allows the search engine server to assign resources to searches, monitor desirability and usefulness of information provided in response to searches, and monitor performance of search operations performed using the search engine server.

2. The system of claim 1, a network browser is contained in a client device that is coupled to the search engine server, wherein the client device receives a search result list identifying the search results from the search engine server and gathers page usefulness statistics from each browsed search result that a user interacts with within the search results and sends back the page usefulness statistics to the search engine server as part of the input information.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the session configuration module comprises a search engine load balancer for assigning a plurality of search operations to search engine server resources, a search engine configuration module for configuring search operations performed within the search engine server, a session statistics configuration module for monitoring statistics based on user interaction with search results, and a cookie-based session persistence module for influencing how the statistics are monitored external to the search engine server.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the session tracking module comprises a client request tracking module for tracking client requests for search sessions, a session statistics module for gathering statistics derived from searches, a session resource module for monitoring the availability of search resources in the system, and a session vector event table that stores search information in time-recorded records over time in order to allow for search performance statistics gathering within the system.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein search result usefulness statistics related to a user'"'"'s interaction with search results are derived automatically by a page usefulness monitor running on a client machine that is coupled to the search engine server, wherein the page usefulness monitor running on the client is a search engine server-launched program agent coupled to retrieve the page usefulness statistics for use by the search engine server.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the search engine server that is communicatively coupled to a network browser comprises a session manager facilitating the retrieval of session statistics across many different concurrently running searches, the session statistics being stored as time sequenced vector events that correlate search result desirability data for a specific search with search results provided for that specific search.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein each search performed on the search engine server is performed in a virtual machine environment that provides added security to each search being performed, and whereby each virtual machine environment enables the collection and use of page usefulness statistics and server performance statistics to improve user the quality of returned search results in response to active search operations.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein a network browser resident on a client sends a search string entered by an user to the search engine server, and wherein the search engine server searches a plurality of web pages on a plurality of web servers for search results that correlate to the search string and outputs information related thereto back to a client device being used by the user.

9. The search engine server of claim 8, wherein the searching of the plurality of web pages on a plurality of web servers using the search string comprises the user opening a webpage of his interest and interacting therewith, wherein the client device monitors a plurality of user interaction characteristics between the user and the search results to generate page usefulness statistics that can be used by the search engine server.

10. The search engine server of claim 1, wherein the search engine server generates and stores time-sequential vector events that associate search session statistics with search results.

11. A search engine server that supports searching of web pages, the search engine server adapted to be communicatively coupled to a plurality of client devices and web servers, the search engine server comprising:

a vector event table stored in memory and comprising a plurality web links and vectoring event information that contains search result usefulness statistics that identify what searched content is more likely to be of interest to a specific search origin; and

a vector event manager that supports statistical evaluation of both a plurality of web server hosted pages searched by the user and the vector event table to alter the functionality of the search engine server to improve the desirability of search content provided to the search origin and improve search efficiency of the search engine server across many different search operations.

12. The search engine server of claim 11, wherein the vector event table comprises a plurality web links and vectoring event information comprising a web link pointer to a webpage on a web server and correlated page usefulness statistics derived as a vector event where each vector event is ordered in a vector event database in a time-sequenced manner.

13. The search engine server of claim 11, wherein the vector event manager supports statistical evaluation of a plurality of web server hosted pages the search engine server comprising a module for computing some useful statistics representing the quality of the web server hosted web pages, based on the gathered session statistics.

14. The search engine server of claim 11, wherein the search engine server receives a request for web server hosted pages and wherein the search origin sends a search string to the search engine and the search engine server retrieves search results containing the search string that the search engine server determines best satisfies desirability indicators stored within the search engine server correlated to the search origin.

15. The search engine server of claim 14, wherein the vector event table is stored within a virtual machine residing within the search engine server, and a plurality of virtual machines reside on the search engine server conducting several different searches for different users wherein separate desirability indicators for each of the different users are stored within each virtual machine.

16. A method for performing searches using a search engine server, wherein the method evaluates session statistics to improve a search performance of the search engine server over time, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving a search string from external to the search engine server, each search string corresponding to a specific client device source;

performing a search operation and outputting search operation information intended for presentation to a user at a specific client device source via a communication interface;

gathering page usefulness statistics back from the client device source via the communication interface, the page usefulness statistics being useful to the search engine server in determining what additional search results are of interest to the user;

merging the page usefulness statistics within the search engine server with other generated server session statistics using processing circuitry;

appending current session statistics into the webpage vector event table that stores session statistics for many different search operations involving many different users over a period of time; and

executing vector event manager for compiling the session statistics gathered in the vector event table to evaluate search engine server performance to improve the quality of search results provided to users in response to search operations.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the step of receiving a search string comprises receiving many search strings from many clients that are performing a plurality of search operations simultaneously and wherein the session statistics are used over many different user search operations to tune the search engine server for improved search operation over time.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein many clients are performing search operations simultaneously, each client starting a search operation by entering a search string of their own, and wherein there is one virtual machine search session existing on the search engine server for each client that is performing search operations and wherein the search engine sever gathers the search session statistics for each of the searched and browsed web pages within each virtual machine that corresponds to each client.

19. The method of claim 16 wherein the step of appending current session statistics into the webpage vector event table comprises updating the vector event table with respective web pages from the search engine database and appending desirability data and current session statistics related to the respective web pages to the vector event table.

20. The method of claim 16 wherein the step of executing the vector event manager for compiling the session statistics gathered in the vector event table comprises the computation of some useful statistics for rating the usefulness of each of the search results via vector event table contents.