Enhanced search results based on user feedback relating to search result abstracts

• US 7,818,320 B2
• Filed: 05/31/2007
• Issued: 10/19/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Makeev, Evgeniy
• Primary Examiner(s): Wu; Yicun
• Assistant Examiner(s): Mamillapalli; Pavan
• Application Number:
  US11/755,835
• Publication Number:
  US 20080301089A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,237 Days
• Field of Search: 707/3, 707/5, 707/705, 707/707, 707/726, 707/728, 707/730, 707/751, 715/207, 715/206, 715/208, 706/48
• US Class Current: 707/730
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3326 using relevance feedback from the user, e.g. relevance feedback on documents, documents sets, document terms or passages
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

The present invention provides for enhanced search results in response to a search request based on a search term. The enhanced search results generate a search results page including a plurality of document identifiers including a hyperlink and an abstract, each abstract including a plurality of abstract terms. The method and apparatus, upon receipt of the search request, accesses a relevancy factor database that includes relevancy factors. The relevancy factors are determined by accessing feedback logs for search results based on the same search term, calculating a popularity factor for each of the plurality of phrases in the abstracts and user selection activity and relevancy factors are based on the popularity factors. Thereby, the method and apparatus generates the search results page with the sequence of the document identifiers based on the relevancy factors.

Claims

1. A method for providing enhanced search results in response to a search request having a search term, the search results including a plurality of document identifiers, each document identifier having a hyperlink and an abstract with a plurality of abstract terms, the method comprising:

receiving a search query containing a plurality of terms;

retrieving a plurality of document identifiers associated with the search query;

retrieving a plurality of feedback logs associated with the search query terms, the feedback logs containing a plurality of past document identifiers previously presented to users and an indication of a user selections of the past document identifiers;

identifying a plurality of contiguous phrases present in the abstract of a given past document identifier;

filtering out a plurality of non-biddable phrases in the abstract;

for each identified contiguous phrase, generating a popularity factor, the popularity factor based on the number of occurrences of the identified phrase in the feedback logs and the indication of a user selections of the past document identifiers;

determining the relevancy factors based on the popularity factors; and

generating a search results page in response to the search request for the search term where the ordering of the document identifiers is determined based on the relevancy factors.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining of a plurality of contiguous phrases further includes:

filtering out a plurality of noise terms in the abstracts.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the contiguous phrase may include a single term.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the feedback logs include a counter value indicating a number of search result sessions for the search term included therein, the method further comprising:

prior to accessing the search results database, determining the counter value; and

if the counter value is below a threshold value, generating the search results page without the relevancy factors.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein if the feedback log is below the threshold value, the method further comprising:

tracking user click activity on the search results page; and

storing the user click activity in the feedback logs.