PROGRAMMABLE SEARCH ENGINE

• US 20130124510A1
• Filed: 09/14/2012
• Published: 05/16/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/10/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Guha, Ramanathan V.
• Granted Patent: US 9,031,937 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/723
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3338 Query expansion
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

A programmable search engine system is programmable by a variety of different entities, such as client devices and vertical content sites to customize search results for users. Context files store instructions for controlling the operations of the programmable search engine. The context files are processed by various context processors, which use the instructions therein to provide various pre-processing, post-processing, and search engine control operations.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, the method comprising:

receiving a search query from a user accessing a client device;

identifying a context file;

selecting one or more document collections specified in the context file;

obtaining, from the one or more selected document collections, one or more context processed search results that are responsive to the search query;

ranking the context processed search results based on, at least, one or more ranking parameters specified in the context file, wherein the ranking parameters include one or more weights for adjusting respective scores of the context processed search results;

providing the ranked context processed search results to the client device; and

wherein identifying, selecting, obtaining, ranking, and providing are performed by data processing apparatus.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the context file is identified based on the search query, the client device, the user accessing the client device, or user site behavior of the user accessing the client device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the context file is provided by the client device, a third-party content provider, or a search engine system.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more weights for adjusting scores associated with the context processed search results are based on a search result document length.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more weights for adjusting scores associated with the context processed search results are based on a search result document publication date.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more weights for adjusting scores associated with the context processed search results are based on a search result document format.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more weights for adjusting scores associated with the context processed search results are based on the one or more selected document collections.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more weights for adjusting scores associated with the context processed search results are based on respective quality measures specified for documents referenced by the context processed search results.