Propagating Information Among Web Pages

• US 20110196861A1
• Filed: 04/21/2011
• Published: 08/11/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Yang, Ke, Egnor, Daniel, Haahr, Paul, Lamping, John, Singhal, Amitabh K., Lacker, Kevin
• Granted Patent: US 8,521,717 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/723
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2228 Indexing structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

Web pages of a Website may be processed to improve search results. For example, information likely to pertain to more than just the Web page it is directly associated with may be identified. One or more other, related, Web pages that such information is likely to pertain to is also identified. The identified information is associated with the identified other Web page(s) and this association is saved in a way to affect a search result score of the Web page(s).

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

selecting a candidate term from among one or more terms in a first web page of a web site;

determining that the candidate term is uncommon, wherein an uncommon term is a term that occurs with less than a threshold frequency in a collection of web pages;

identifying a second web page of the web site, wherein the candidate term is not associated with the second web page in an index of web pages; and

updating the index of web pages to add an association of the candidate term with the second web page.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the second web page is above the first web page in a URL hierarchy of the web site.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the second web page is below the first web page in a URL hierarchy of the web site.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying a third web page of the web site, wherein the candidate term is associated with the third web page in the index of web pages; and

updating the index of web pages to increase a weight of the association of the candidate term with the third web page.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein updating the index of web pages comprises associating a boost value to the association of the candidate term with the second web page in the index.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein determining that the candidate term is uncommon comprises determining that the candidate term has an inverse document frequency with reference to the collection of web pages, the inverse document frequency being above a threshold.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

receiving a search query including the candidate term; and

determining a search result score of the second web page based in part on the boost value.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the search result score is based in part on an initial search result score for the second web page.

9. The method of claim 2, wherein identifying a second web page comprises:

identifying a second web page that is within a threshold number of levels in the URL hierarchy from the first web page.

10. A system comprising:

one or more processors;

at least one input device; and

one or more storage devices storing processor-executable instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising;

selecting a candidate term from among one or more terms in a first web page of a web site;

determining that the candidate term is uncommon, wherein an uncommon term is a term that occurs with less than a threshold frequency in a collection of web pages;

identifying a second web page of the web site, wherein the candidate term is not associated with the second web page in an index of web pages; and

updating the index of web pages to add an association of the candidate term with the second web page.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the second web page is above the first web page in a URL hierarchy of the web site.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the second web page is below the first web page in a URL hierarchy of the web site.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise:

identifying a third web page of the web site, wherein the candidate term is associated with the third web page in the index of web pages; and

updating the index of web pages to increase a weight of the association of the candidate term with the third web page.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein updating the index of web pages comprises associating a boost value to the association of the candidate term with the second web page in the index.

15. The system of claim 10, wherein determining that the candidate term is uncommon comprises determining that the candidate term has an inverse document frequency with reference to the collection of web pages, the inverse document frequency being above a threshold.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise:

receiving a search query including the candidate term; and

determining a search result score of the second web page based in part on the boost value.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the search result score is based in part on an initial search result score for the second web page.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein identifying a second web page comprises:

identifying a second web page that is within a threshold number of levels in the URL hierarchy from the first web page.