METHOD AND APPARATUS TO REORDER SEARCH RESULTS IN VIEW OF IDENTIFIED INFORMATION OF INTEREST

• US 20120233144A1
• Filed: 05/18/2012
• Published: 09/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Rosario, Barbara, Schilit, William Noah
• Granted Patent: US 8,812,470 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/10 File systems; File servers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/95 Retrieval from the web
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

Various embodiments described herein provide systems, methods, and software to automatically reorder search results presented to users based on information specific to the user or the computing environment of the user. Some embodiments include a data store holding user or environment specific data that is used to identify search results that are more likely to be relevant to the user. These and other embodiments are described in greater detail herein.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

storing data of interest on a local computing device;

receiving a query with regard to the data of interest stored on the local computing device;

modifying the query based on the data of interest and submitting the query to at least one query processor;

receiving query results in a first order in response to the submitted query;

scoring each of at least a subset of the query results as a function of the data of interest; and

reordering the query results into a second order as a function of the scoring.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data of interest includes data identifying one or more properties of a configuration of the local computing device.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the data identifying one or more properties of the configuration of the local computing device includes data identifying one or more devices operable within a computing environment of the local computing device.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein at least one of the one or more devices operable within the computing environment of the local computing device is a device operative on local network to which the local computing device is connected.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the query results includes query results from an Internet search engine.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein scoring each of at least the subset of the query results as a function of the data of interest includes:

retrieving at least a subset of web pages represented in the Internet search engine query results; and

identifying and counting unique features represented in the data of interest that occur in each of the retrieved web pages.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the identifying and counting unique features represented in the data of interest that occur in each of the retrieved web pages includes counting occurrences of each unique feature in each of the retrieved web pages.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the scoring further includes scoring each of at least the subset of the query results as a function of a website from which the respective webpage is retrieved.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein scoring each of at least the subset of the query results as a function of the data of interest further includes:

scoring each of a plurality of features of a retrieved web page;

weighting at least one feature; and

summing each of the features, including weighted features, to determine a score for each retrieved webpage

10. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

deriving a value for each search result from a position of the respective search result in the first order; and

adding to a result of the scoring of each query result to the derived value of the respective search result.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

weighting one or more of the score of each search result and the value derived from a position of each search result in the first order.

12. A non-transitory computer readable medium, with instructions stored thereon, which when executed by at least one processor of a computing device, cause the computing device to:

store data of interest on a local computing device;

receive a query with regard to the data of interest stored on the local computing device;

modify the query based on the data of interest and submitting the query to at least one query processor;

receive query results in a first order in response to the submitted query;

score each of at least a subset of the query results as a function of the data of interest; and

reorder the query results into a second order as a function of the scoring.

13. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the data of interest includes data identifying one or more properties of a configuration of the local computing device.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 13, wherein the data identifying one or more properties of the configuration of the local computing device includes data identifying one or more devices operable within a computing environment of the local computing device.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 14, wherein at least one of the one or more devices operable within the computing environment of the local computing device is a device operative on local network to which the local computing device is connected.

16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 12, wherein the query results includes query results from an Internet search engine.

17. An apparatus comprising:

at least one processor, at least one memory device, and at least one network interface device;

an Internet browsing application stored on the at least one memory device and executable by the at least one processor;

a search result re-ranking module stored on the at least one memory device and executable by the at least one processor to be operable with the Internet browsing application to;

store data of interest on the at least one memory device;

receive a query with regard to the data of interest stored on the at least one memory device;

modify the query based on the data of interest and submitting the query, via the at least one network interface device, to at least one query processor;

receive, via the at least one network interface device, search results in a first order in response to a search submitted to an Internet searching utility through the Internet browsing application;

score each of at least a subset of the search results as a function of data of interest for the apparatus; and

reorder the search results into a second order as a function of the score of each of the scored search results.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the data of interest includes data identifying one or more properties of a configuration of the local computing device.

19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the data identifying one or more properties of the configuration of the local computing device includes data identifying one or more devices operable within a computing environment of the local computing device.

20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein at least one of the one or more devices operable within the computing environment of the local computing device is a device operative on local network to which the local computing device is connected.