WEB BROWSER ACCESSIBLE SEARCH ENGINE WHICH ADAPTS BASED ON USER INTERACTION

• US 20090282021A1
• 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: Enpulz LLC
• Inventors: Bennett, James D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,886,637 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3326 using relevance feedback from the user, e.g. relevance feedback on documents, documents sets, document terms or passages
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/334 Query execution G06F16/335 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation

Abstract

A search engine (SE) is capable of adapting based on the user'"'"'s interaction with search results/WebPages. Information, based on user interaction, is subsequently used to modify the priority of search results to create a more relevant search list that provides the user more relevant search information in a shorter period of time. The search engine adaptation takes place by calculating evaluation inputs based on user interaction with search results to compute a metric herein called as the desirability number for one or more search results. The desirability number (DN) is tagged as a search result or page attribute and is stored in the search engine server database in association with each search result or page. Based on the DN and other possible indicators, the resultant search list is modified to better prioritize search results that appear to be more meaningful to the user before continuing to present results to the user.

Claims

1. A computing device that is adapted to be connected to an Internet, whereby the computing device supports search engine operations, the computing device comprising:

a communication interface;

memory; and

processing circuitry coupled to the communication interface and to the memory, the processing circuitry, memory, and communication interface operable to;

receive search criteria from a search engine tool;

determine search results based upon the search criteria;

receive a desirability indication for a selected search result;

process the desirability indication along with information regarding other search results to determine desirability data that indicates other search results that are likely to be of greater interest to a user than the search results; and

output information to the user to direct the user to the other search results.

2. The computing device of claim 1 wherein desirability indication is derived by processing user input and user interaction data associated with the selected search results so that the computing device can better evaluate the usefulness of the other search results.

3. The computing device of claim 1 wherein the desirability indication is derived by processing a plurality of evaluation inputs that were derived by monitoring user interaction with search results.

4. The computing device of claim 3 wherein the desirability indication is calculated by another computing device external to the computing device wherein the computing device is adapted receive the desirability indication as an input.

5. The computing device of claim 3, wherein the desirability indication for the selected search result is computed using several evaluation inputs that track user interaction with the selected search result, the evaluation inputs including at least one time duration of time spent by the user in some tracked activity and data related to the user'"'"'s following of link paths within the selected search result.

6. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry determines the desirability indication by first obtaining which characteristics of the selected search result were desired by the user, and then scanning the other search results for similar characteristics, and then sets desirability numbers for other search results with similar characteristics to indicate a likelihood of greater interest to the user.

7. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the computing device is a server system adapted to perform searches that are initiated from several external computer sources.

8. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the other search results are prioritized differently over time to direct the user to the other search results in a shorter period of time whereas search results that are identified as being undesired search results are prioritized lower than the other search results.

9. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the desirability indicators for one or more search results are archived for future use.

10. The computing device of claim 9, wherein the desirability indicators for one or more search results are rolled back to a previous state by the computing device in response to user data.

11. The computing device of claim 1, wherein new search results not originally found by the processing circuitry when determining search results are added to the search results over time to improve the number of search results presented by the computing device to the user that are likely to be more desirable to the user.

12. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the desirability indication from the user may be stored by the computing device for use in processing other search criteria from other users.

13. The computing device of claim 1, wherein a control widget is used by the computing device to allow the user to enter at least one input into the computing device to assist the computing device in setting one or more desirability indications.

14. The computing device of claim 1, wherein a new search list is derived from the search results by assigning desirability indications to the other search results, where these desirability indications are based on content type and user interaction with in the selected search result.

15. A method of adapting a search process for a user over time as a function of user interaction with search results, the method comprising:

determining search results that include Internet content, the determining of the search results being based upon at least one search term;

presenting the search results to the user via a communication interface;

determining page evaluation parameters for items of the search results based upon user input corresponding to the items of the search results;

computing desirability indicators for the items of the search results based upon the page evaluation parameters using processing circuitry;

updating a search engine database with the desirability indicators via the communication interface;

determining modified search results that include Internet content based upon the search term and the desirability indicators;

prioritizing the modified search results based upon the search term and the desirability indicators; and

presenting the modified search results to the user via the communication interface.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of determining modified search results comprises deleting undesired search results from the search results and adding more desired search results to the search results to result in a modified search result list that is presented to the user.

17. The method of claim 15 further comprising the step of reducing the search results to a list of more relevant search results whereby the list of more relevant search results is a shorter list that the search results so that the amount of search results the user processes decreases over time, while the relevant search results contain information more desired by the user.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of computing desirability indicators comprises deriving the desirability indicators for a selected page based on user interaction with that page where the user interaction that is processed includes user movement among and within search results and a time duration the user spends focused on certain content within search results.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein the step of computing the desirability indicators involves deducing what content within a user selected search result was of interest to the user and analyzing that content to assign desirability indicators for other search results that exist in a same search space that contain similar content, and using the desirability indicators in the step of determining modified search results to select which search results are of more interest to the user and presenting the user with those search results.

20. A method for processing a search request, the method comprising the steps of:

initiating a search for search results based upon user-entered search criteria;

assembling the search results into a search list;

outputting the search results via a communication interface and under control of processing circuitry for eventual review by a user;

setting desirability indicators for the search results based on user interaction with one or more search results over time using the processing circuitry;

using the desirability indicators to identify more desirable search results for the user and prioritizing and presenting those more desirable search results for more efficient review by the user; and

repeating the steps of setting and using over time to further refine the search results over time to continually process search results in a search space to provide more desirable content for review by the user.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the desirability indicators are at least two desirability indicators selected from the group consisting of:

a time period a user spends on a page;

a time period a user spends reviewing certain content;

a type of content viewed by user, link usage by the user, next and back button operations performed by the user, content skipped over by the user, input from the user regarding desirability of content, keywords associated with a search result, and the search criteria; and

wherein the step of using the desirability indicators comprises scanning a plurality of the search results to derive desirability numbers for each search result in the plurality of search results and comparing the desirability numbers of different search results to determine which of the scanned search results are desired search results and more likely to be desired by the user, and presenting information related to those desired search results as output to the user.