Interface for a universal search engine

• US 7,447,678 B2
• Filed: 12/31/2003
• Issued: 11/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/31/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Taylor, Bret, Buyukkokten, Orkut, Mayer, Marissa
• Primary Examiner(s): Wong; Don
• Assistant Examiner(s): Thai; Hanh B
• Application Number:
  US10/748,666
• Publication Number:
  US 20050165744A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,770 Days
• Field of Search: 707 1- 10, 707/104.1
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A search engine may perform a search for a user search query over a number of possible search categories. For example, the search query may be performed for general web documents, images, and news documents. The search engine ranks categories based on the search query and/or the documents returned for each category and presents the search results to the user by category. Higher ranking categories may be presented more prominently than lower ranking categories.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a search query;

performing a search, in response to the search query, on a database including a plurality of document categories to obtain a list of search results corresponding to each of the document categories;

ranking the document categories relative to one another based on a content of documents in each of the lists of search results; and

generating a document in which the list of search results corresponding to each of at least two of the document categories are presented in sections by category based on the ranking of the at least of the document categories, where a first section of the generated document corresponding to a higher ranking one of the at least two of the document categories is more prominently presented within the generated document than a second section of the generated document corresponding to a lower ranking one of the at least two of the document categories, and the first section presents a textual snippet associated with respective ones of the listed search results corresponding to the higher ranking document category and the second section does not present a textual snippet associated with each of the listed search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category.

2. The method of claim 1, where the generated document includes the search results as hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP) links.

3. The method of claim 1, where the first section includes more of the search results than are included in the second section.

4. The method of claim 1, where at least one of the sections includes a title describing the category corresponding to the at least one section.

5. The method of claim 1, where at least one of the sections includes a link to additional search results for the category corresponding to the at least one section.

6. The method of claim 1, where the generated document is a web page.

7. The method of claim 1, where ranking the document categories is further based on the search query.

8. The method of claim 1, where the first section is presented on a left hand side of the generated document.

9. The method of claim 1, where the document categories include at least one of a news category, an image category, or a product category.

10. The method of claim 1, where the document categories include a general web page category.

11. The method of claim 1, where the second section presents:

no links to individual ones of the documents in the list of the search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category,

an indication of a number of the documents in the list of the search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category, and

a link to the list of the search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category.

12. The method of claim 1, where the ranking the document categories relative to one another comprises ranking the document categories independent of a total number of the documents in each of the lists of the search results.

28. The method of claim 1, where ranking the document categories includes:

calculating values that define a closeness of a comparison of the search query to the documents in each of the lists of search results; and

ranking the document categories based on the calculated values.

13. A search engine implemented within a computer device, comprising:

a search component configured to use a search query from a user to search a database including a plurality of document categories and obtain a list of search results corresponding to each of the document categories;

a ranking component configured to rank the document categories relative to one another based on a comparison of the search query to contents of documents in the list of search results corresponding to each of the document categories; and

an interface generation component configured to generate a document in which the list of search results corresponding to each of the document categories is presented in sections by category based on the ranking of the document categories, where a first section of the generated document corresponding to a higher ranking one of the document categories is more prominently presented within the generated document than a second section of the generated document corresponding to a lower ranking one of the categories, and the first section presents a textual snippet associated with respective ones of the listed search results corresponding to the higher ranking document category and the second section does not present a textual snippet associated with each of the listed search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category.

14. The search engine of claim 13, where at least one of the sections includes a link to additional search results for the category corresponding to the section.

15. The search engine of claim 13, where the generated document is a web page.

16. The search engine of claim 13, where the second section presents:

no links to individual ones of the documents in the list of the search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category,

an indication of a number of the documents in the list of the search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category, and

a link to the list of the search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category.

17. The search engine of claim 13, where the documents in the list of the search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category outnumber the documents in the list of the search results corresponding to the higher ranking document category.

18. A system comprising:

means for receiving a search query from a user;

means for performing a search in response to the search query in each of a plurality of document categories to identify documents;

means for ranking the plurality of document categories relative to one another based on contents of the identified documents associated with each of the document categories; and

means for generating a results document in which lists of the identified documents associated with the plurality of document categories are presented in a plurality of separate sections by category, where a first section includes higher ranking ones of the document categories and is more prominently placed in the results document than is a second section including lower ranking ones of the document categories, and the first section presents a textual snippet associated with respective ones of the listed search results corresponding to the higher ranking document category and the second section does not present a textual snippet associated with each of the listed search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category.

19. The system of claim 18, where the lists of the identified documents comprise hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP) links.

20. The system of claim 19, where the HTTP links of the higher ranking document categories are in sections of the results document that include more HTTP links than the HTTP links included in sections of the results document corresponding to the lower ranking document categories.

21. The system of claim 18, where the results document includes titles describing the document categories.

22. The system of claim 18, where the results document includes links to additional search results for at least one of the document categories.

23. The method system of claim 18, where the results document is a web page.

24. The system of claim 18, where the means for generating the results document is configured to present a first one of the plurality of sections corresponding to a first one of the plurality of document categories, a second one of the plurality of sections corresponding to a second one of the plurality of document categories, and a third one of the plurality of sections corresponding to a first one of the plurality of document categories using at least three different levels of prominence.

25. The system of claim 24, where the first section presents a textual snippet associated with each of the listed search results for the first document category, the second section presents links to individual ones of the documents in the list of identified documents for the second document category, and the third section presented presents a link to the list of the identified documents for the third document category.

26. The system of claim 25, where at least one of the first section, the second section, or the third section includes an indication of a number of the documents in the list of the identified documents for the corresponding document category.

27. A computer-readable medium containing programming instructions for execution by a processor, the computer-readable medium comprising:

Instructions to search documents categorized into a plurality of document categories in response to a search query received from a user;

Instructions to rank the document categories corresponding to the documents based on contents of identified ones of the documents in each of the categories; and

Instructions to generate a results document in which lists of the identified documents corresponding to at least two of the document categories are presented in separate sections of the results document by category, where a first section corresponding to a higher ranking one of the at least two of the document categories is more prominently placed in the results document than a second section corresponding to a lower ranking one of the at least two of the document categories, and the first section presents a textual snippet associated with respective ones of the listed search results corresponding to the higher ranking document category and the second section does not present a textual snippet associated with each of the listed search results corresponding to the lower ranking document category.

29. The computer-readable medium of claim 27, where the instructions to rank the document categories further include:

instructions to calculate values that define a closeness of a comparison of the search query to the identified documents in each of the document categories; and

instructions to rank the document categories based on the calculated values.

30. The computer-readable medium of claim 27, where the identified documents corresponding to the lower ranking document category outnumber the identified documents corresponding to the higher ranking document category.

31. The computer-readable medium of claim 27, where the section corresponding to the lower ranking document category presents:

no links to individual ones of the identified documents in the list of the identified documents corresponding to the lower ranking document category,

an indication of a number of the identified documents in the list of the identified documents corresponding to the lower ranking document category, and

a link to the list of the identified documents corresponding to the lower ranking document category.