DETERMINING RELEVANCY AND DESIRABILITY OF TERMS

• US 20100017398A1
• Filed: 06/30/2009
• Published: 01/21/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/09/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Gupta, Raghav, Xu, Sichun
• Granted Patent: US 8,200,683 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: N/A
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3334 Selection or weighting of terms from queries, including natural language queries

Abstract

A system and method to sort search results based upon a desirability value is illustrated. This desirability value may be based upon the difference between a demand value and a supply value. Demand may be based upon user activity such as click-throughs, purchases, price, or location. Supply may be based upon a supply of keywords that may be the number of times a word is used in search or item title. The system and method may include receiving a search query, associating a first numerical value with a keyword that is a part of the search query, tracking user activity associated with the keyword, associating a second numerical value with the keyword based upon the user activity, finding a difference value between the first and second numerical values, associating this difference value with the keyword, sorting keywords based upon the difference values, and returning the search results of the sorting.

Claims

9. A system comprising:

a search engine to process a search query specifying one or more keywords to identify listings satisfying the search query, each listing from the identified listings describing an item or service offered for sale;

a sorting engine to organize the identified listings based on a composite relevance score assigned to each listing from the identified listings, the composite relevance score derived as a sum of relevance scores associated with each keyword appearing in a listing from the identified listings, each relevance score representing a desirability measure for a keyword with which the relevance score is associated, the desirability measure determined based on a calculated difference between a measure of demand and supply for a respective keyword in the listing; and

an output module to display the organized listings.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the sorting engine is to sort the listings from the identified listings in descending order of the respective composite relevance score assigned to each listing from the identified listings.

11. The system of claim 9, further comprising a relevance engine to derive the composite relevance score as the sum of relevance scores associated with each keyword appearing in a title of a listing from the identified listings.

12. The system of claim 9, further comprising a relevance engine to derive the measure of demand for a respective keyword in the title of a listing as the percentage of all search queries received over a period of time that include the keyword.

13. The system of claim 9, further comprising a relevance engine to derive the measure of demand for a respective keyword in the title of a listing by utilizing data from a tracking engine configured to track user activity associated with listings including the keyword in the title.

14-1. The system of claim 1, further comprising a relevance engine to derive the measure of demand for a respective keyword as the percentage of listings that i) are selected by a user over a period of time, and ii) have titles including words that match keywords specified in the query.

17. A computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform a method, comprising:

processing a search query specifying one or more keywords to identify listings satisfying the search query, each listing from the identified listings describing an item or service offered for sale;

organizing the identified listings based on a composite relevance score assigned to each listing from the identified listings, the composite relevance score derived as a sum of relevance scores associated with each keyword appearing in a listing from the identified listings, each relevance score representing a desirability measure for a keyword with which the relevance score is associated, the desirability measure based on a calculated difference between a measure of demand and supply for a respective keyword in the listing from the identified listings; and

displaying the organized listings.