USER-SENSITIVE PAGERANK

• US 20100023513A1
• Filed: 10/09/2009
• Published: 01/28/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Tomkins, Andrew, Fayyad, Usama M., Berkhin, Pavel, Raghavan, Prabhakar
• Granted Patent: US 9,495,452 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: N/A
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access

Abstract

Techniques are described for generating an authority value of a first one of a plurality of documents. A first component of the authority value is generated with reference to outbound links associated with the first document. The outbound links enable access to a first subset of the plurality of documents. A second component of the authority value is generated with reference to a second subset of the plurality of documents. Each of the second subset of documents represents a potential starting point for a user session. A third component of the authority value is generated representing a likelihood that a user session initiated by any of a population of users will end with the first document. The first, second, and third components of the authority value are combined to generate the authority value. At least one of the first, second, and third components of the authority value is computed with reference to user data relating to at least some of the outbound links and the second subset of documents.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for generating an authority value of a first one of a plurality of documents, comprising:

identifying text associated with each of a plurality of inbound links enabling access to the first document;

assigning a weight to the text associated with each of the inbound links, each of the weights being derived with reference to user data representing a frequency with which the corresponding inbound link was selected by a population of users; and

generating the authority value with reference to the weights.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the plurality of documents may be represented by a graph, and each of the weights represents a likelihood that a user will traverse a directed edge of the graph associated with the corresponding inbound link.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the population of users corresponds to a segment of a superset of users, the segment being selected from the superset of users with reference to one or more of demographic data or behavior data.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein each of the weights is further derived with reference to a probabilistic distribution associated with the population of users.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the first document comprises any of a page, a file, a site, a host, a domain.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising ranking the first document among a plurality of search results with reference to the authority value.

7. A system for generating an authority value of a first one of a plurality of documents, the system comprising one or more computing devices configured to:

identify text associated with each of a plurality of inbound links enabling access to the first document;

assign a weight to the text associated with each of the inbound links, each of the weights being derived with reference to user data representing a frequency with which the corresponding inbound link was selected by a population of users; and

generate the authority value with reference to the weights.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein the plurality of documents may be represented by a graph, and each of the weights represents a likelihood that a user will traverse a directed edge of the graph associated with the corresponding inbound link.

9. The system of claim 7 wherein the population of users corresponds to a segment of a superset of users, the segment being selected from the superset of users with reference to one or more of demographic data or behavior data.

10. The system of claim 7 wherein each of the weights is further derived with reference to a probabilistic distribution associated with the population of users.

11. The system of claim 7 wherein the first document comprises any of a page, a file, a site, a host, a domain.

12. The system of claim 7 wherein the one or more computing devices are further configured to rank the first document among a plurality of search results with reference to the authority value.

13. A computer program product comprising at least one computer-readable storage medium having computer instructions stored therein that are configured to cause one or more computing devices to:

identify text associated with each of a plurality of inbound links enabling access to the first document;

assign a weight to the text associated with each of the inbound links, each of the weights being derived with reference to user data representing a frequency with which the corresponding inbound link was selected by a population of users; and

generate the authority value with reference to the weights.

14. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the plurality of documents may be represented by a graph, and each of the weights represents a likelihood that a user will traverse a directed edge of the graph associated with the corresponding inbound link.

15. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the population of users corresponds to a segment of a superset of users, the segment being selected from the superset of users with reference to one or more of demographic data or behavior data.

16. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein each of the weights is further derived with reference to a probabilistic distribution associated with the population of users.

17. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the first document comprises any of a page, a file, a site, a host, a domain.

18. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the computer instructions are further configured to cause the one or more computing devices to rank the first document among a plurality of search results with reference to the authority value.