KEYWORD EXPRESSION LANGUAGE FOR ONLINE SEARCH AND ADVERTISING

• US 20090282035A1
• Filed: 05/09/2008
• Published: 11/12/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: FERREIRA, IAN P., DOMINOWSKA, EWA
• Granted Patent: US 8,145,620 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/56 Natural language generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements

Abstract

Media and methods are provided for creating and operating a keyword expression language. Syntax is generated as an abbreviation to represent a list of keywords. The syntax is executed as part of the keyword expression language to provide keywords. The syntax includes tokens that substitute for groups of information. Advertisers generate syntax which is subsequently used by a third-party to match to search queries and ads. The third-party may also generate keywords to match to the search queries and ads. The keywords are used to trigger advertising over the Internet.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable storage media having computer instructions embodied thereon for performing a method for executing a keyword expression language to match keyword expression language syntax to search queries and ads, the method comprising:

receiving one or more letters with one or more symbols to represent an instance of the keyword expression language wherein a combination of the one or more letters with the one or more symbols or a subset of the combination of the one or more letters with the one or more symbols is also represented by the instance;

associating the instance with one or more ads; and

storing the instance in a database.

2. The media of claim 1, wherein receiving the one or more letters with the one or more symbols comprises receiving from an advertiser or a user the one or more letters with the one or more symbols.

3. The media of claim 2, further comprising

generating a set of keywords from one or more permutations of the instance;

and

associating the set of keywords with the one or more ads.

4. The media of claim 3, further comprising providing the one or more ads to a computing device of the user when a match occurs between a search query and the instance or the match occurs between the search query and a member of the set of keywords.

5. The media of claim 4, further comprising:

receiving the search query from the computing device operated by the user;

matching the query to the member of the set of keywords; and

based on the match, providing one of the one or more ads to the computing device wherein the one of the one or more ads is displayed to the user.

6. The media of claim 1, further comprising receiving one or more words with the one or more letters and the one or more symbols to represent the instance.

7. The media of claim 6, wherein the keyword expression language is a subset of a regular expression language.

8. The media of claim 7, wherein the keyword expression language includes keywords expressed as patterns.

9. The media of claim 6, further comprising executing the keyword expression language with a set of tokens wherein a token represents a group of related keywords.

10. The media of claim 9, wherein the group of related keywords is derived from an aspect about a user.

11. A method for generating, for an advertiser, keywords from a pattern using a keyword expression language, comprising:

concatenating one or more characters to represent the pattern;

creating the pattern for a set of related keywords; and

submitting the pattern to a computing device wherein the computing device generates the set of related keywords.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein a character defines an option, a range, or an occurrence of a previous, current, or later character, and two characters define a set.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the one or more characters represent one or more ranges of characters.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the one or more ranges of characters are grouped into one or more sets.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the one or more ranges are selected from a first group including alpha numeric characters.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the one or more ranges are selected from numeric characters.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the one or more ranges are selected from alpha characters.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the one or more ranges are selected from lower case alpha characters.

19. A method for generating, for an advertiser, keywords from a token using a keyword expression language, comprising:

concatenating one or more characters to represent the token;

creating the token for a set of related keywords associated with a user submitting a search query; and

submitting the token to a computing device wherein the computing device generates the set of related keywords when the search query is received.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the token is a term that represents the set of related keywords and is selected from a group including location, gender, datepart, date, month, class, city, county, state, and country.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising concatenating the token with another token and a character operator to restrict a generation of the set of related keywords.

22. The method of claim 20, further comprising grouping the token with one or more words to form a phrase wherein the phrase restricts a generation of search results.