Network server employing client favorites information and profiling

• US 20090287683A1
• Filed: 03/31/2009
• Published: 11/19/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/14/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Enpulz LLC
• Inventors: Bennett, James D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,364,659 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

An Internet infrastructure that supports searching of web links wherein a user profile is used to reorder search results in a search result list for improved searching. The Internet infrastructure consists of a plurality client devices with web browsers that are incorporated with user-profiling modules and a search engine server. The process of searching and reordering includes the search engine server receiving a search string along with a user profile from the user-profiling module (or retrieving the user profile from a database). Then, the search engine server stores the user profile in a database that is associated with the search engine server and delivers search results based upon the search string, and reorders the search results based upon stored data in the database.

Claims

1. A computing device adapted to be coupled to a communication network, the computing device comprising:

one or more processing units;

memory coupled to the one or more processing units; and

network communication circuitry coupled to the one or more processing units, wherein the one or more processing units, memory, and network communication circuitry are adapted to interoperate to perform the following operations;

derive a user profile for a user, the user profile being created through at least one of;

(i) receiving user profile input from the user;

(ii) monitoring user interaction with a computer; and

(iii) monitoring browser favorite information;

receive a search string via the network communications circuitry, the search string containing search information;

select a source for finding search results to define at least one selected source, the at least one selected source being selected from a group consisting of at least;

a user favorites database, a browser interaction database, a user profile database, and a database assembled from crawling network content;

derive a search result list by searching data within the at least one selected source, wherein search results in the search result list correlate appropriately with the search string;

order the search result list to place more relevant search results higher in a rank order of the search result list based on processing of the user profile with the search results; and

deliver, via the network communication circuitry, search result information from the search result list for eventual use by the user.

2. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the one or more processing units, memory, and network communication circuitry are adapted to interoperate to perform the following additional operations:

process user interaction with the browser over time to derive a browser interaction database;

process at least one of the user interaction or the browser interaction database to ensure that only material user interaction data is present in the browser interaction database; and

select the browser interaction database as one of the at least one selected sources.

3. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the user profile contains information entered by the user and selected from the group consisting of:

age, occupation, sex/gender, and areas of interest to the user.

4. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the user profile contains information derived from tracking user interaction with browser web pages, stores these data results, and processes the stored data, wherein the information is selected from the group consisting of:

content accesses, click operations performed within in the browser, an operation performed in the browser.

5. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the user profile retrieves one or more favorite list(s) and related metadata for the client or the specific user and processes the information to determine a user profile by retrieving one or more favorite lists and related metadata for the user and processing the favorite lists and related metadata to determine a user profile.

6. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the search result list contains search results that are selected by processing the user profile.

7. The computing device of claim 1, wherein an ability to order the search result list to place more relevant search results higher in a rank order of the search result list based on processing of the user profile with the search results can be enabled or disabled by the user.

8. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the at least one selected source is two sources selected from a group consisting of at least:

a user favorites database, a browser interaction database, a user profile database, and a database assembled from crawling network content.

9. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the at least one source are three sources selected from a group consisting of at least:

a user favorites database, a browser interaction database, a user profile database, and a database assembled from crawling network content.

10. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the at least one source consists of a user favorites database, a browser interaction database, a user profile database, and a database assembled from crawling network content via user input.

11. The computing device of claim 1 wherein the one or more processing units, memory, and network communication circuitry are adapted to interoperate to perform the following additional operation:

store and process the user favorites data in addition to processing user interaction and the search string to prepare for search result searching.

12. The computing device of claim 11 wherein the user interaction that is monitored includes one or more of:

(i) a time at which a web page is visited;

(ii) a duration for which a web page is visited;

(iii) recording a kind of interaction performed with a web site;

(iv) recording a kind of content accessed in the web site;

(v) the amount of interaction that the user had with a web site;

(vi) the number of additional sub-pages visited within a parent web page; and

(vii) a number of times a web page is revisited.

13. The computing device of claim 12 wherein a step of processing the user interaction or the browser interaction database comprises filtering one or more of the following content from inclusion in the browser interaction database:

(i) adult content;

(ii) illegal content;

(iii) content associated with malware activity;

(iv) quickly closed web pages;

(v) unwanted pop-ups;

or (vi) unwanted or advertisements.

14. The computing device of claim 1 wherein searching is performed using favorite data and the browser interaction database, and wherein a user input window is provided to the user to allow the user to inspect and edit favorite data before allowing the computing device to have access to the favorite data.

15. The computing device of claim 1 wherein the at least one selected source is a plurality of data sources where each of the plurality of data sources are searched and a list of search results in the search result list is provided to the user including at least one search result from each selected source.

16. The computing device of claim 1 wherein the at least one selected source is a plurality of data sources where each of the plurality of data sources are searched and a list of search results in the search result list is provided to the user in segregated lists that are segregated based on source.

17. A search engine server that supports delivery of search result pages external to the search engine server, the search engine server comprising:

a user profile gathering module that gathers user profiles from external to the search engine server, with user permission, and stores user profiles in a database;

a user profile based search result sorting module that sorts search results provided by the search engine server using data in the database and wherein;

the search engine server receives a search string and user profile from external to the search engine server;

the user profile gathering modules processes the user profile and stores the user profile in the database;

the user profile based search result sorting module selects and sorts web links from a crawl webpage database, based upon the search string and user profile, to form a user profile based search result list; and

the search engine server delivers the user profile based search result list external to the search engine server via a communication circuit.

18. The search engine server of claim 17, wherein the search result page comprises an ‘

include user profile’

button that a user can select or deselect to enable the use of the user profile by the search engine server.

19. The search engine server of claim 18, wherein the search engine server responds to the clicking of the ‘

include user profile’

button by delivering a search result page containing web links ordered on the basis of the user profile.

20. The search engine server of claim 18, wherein the search engine server responds to the clicking of the ‘

include user profile’

button by delivering search results containing web links that are selected and ordered on the basis of the user profile.

21. A method performed by a search engine server that supports delivering of search results that are web links based upon a search string, the method comprising:

receiving user profiles from a plurality of sources external to the search engine server during source interaction with the search engine server;

storing gathered user profiles in a database from the sources;

processing stored user profile data in the database;

tailoring the search results using the user profile data within the database; and

delivering search result pages containing search result information that is rank ordered according to user profile data.