Discovering web-based multimedia using search toolbar data

• US 7,827,191 B2
• Filed: 12/14/2005
• Issued: 11/02/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Williams, Hugh Evan
• Primary Examiner(s): Jalil; Neveen Abel
• Assistant Examiner(s): BUCKINGHAM, KELLYE DEE
• Application Number:
  US11/300,803
• Publication Number:
  US 20070136263A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,784 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/776
• 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

Toolbar search data is utilized to facilitate search engine crawlers to locate resources on a network such as, for example, multimedia resources on the Internet. In one instance, for example, users who opt into a user feedback experience have their toolbar searches relayed to a toolbar data mining component which augments a multimedia crawler in locating the multimedia resources. A media inspection component is then employed to determine the content of the media resource and, when appropriate, the media resource is then indexed for utilization in search engine indexing nodes and the like. This allows resources, for example, such as multimedia resources, that are typically undiscoverable by search engine crawlers to be located and indexed for searching.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates discovery of resources on a network, comprising:

a memory for storing data; and

a processor coupled to the memory configured to act as;

a receiving component that receives network search toolbar data from a network search toolbar data source, the network search data comprising identities of respective resources in the network accessed by one or more users;

a mining component that mines multimedia resource information and determines respective identities of previously undiscovered resources among the resources accessed by the one or more users by obtaining the identities of the respective resources in the network accessed by the one or more users provided in the network search toolbar data and identifying respective resources in the network accessed by the one or more users provided in the network search toolbar data that are not included in a list of currently indexed resources as previously undiscovered resources;

an inspection component that determines if the previously undiscovered resources comprise unique resources that can be indexed or searched by the search engine; and

an indexing and statistical component that provides respective previously undiscovered resources identified by the mining component and respective locations of the previously undiscovered resources to a search engine for indexing,

wherein the mining component identifies the previously undiscovered resources in the network search data prior to forwarding the previously undiscovered resources to the search engine for indexing, and

wherein the indexing and statistical component performs one or more of extracting resource metadata, collating access statistics, or relaying multimedia resource information to the search engine for indexing or querying.

2. The system of claim 1, the mining component mines the network search toolbar data for information utilized in a search engine crawler or a search engine ranking scheme.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the inspection component provides the determined unique resources to the search engine for indexing or searching.

3. A method for facilitating resource discovery from a network, comprising:

receiving network search toolbar data from a network search toolbar data source, the network search toolbar data comprising locations of respective resources in the network accessed by one or more users;

employing a computer comprising a processor and a memory to identify resources not previously indexed by a search engine among the resources accessed by the one or more users by analyzing the locations of respective resources accessed by the one or more users provided in the network search toolbar data and comparing the respective resources accessed by the one or more users to a list of resources indexed by the search engine; and

providing the identified resources and the respective locations of the identified resources to the search engine for indexing.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

employing the multimedia resource information to facilitate in queuing a search engine crawler based on toolbar metrics.

5. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

utilizing the multimedia resource information to facilitate in ranking search results of the search engine.

6. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

extracting metadata relating to the resources accessed by the one or more users for unique resources;

collating access statistics for the unique resources; and

relaying the metadata or collated access statistics to the search engine for at least one of indexing or querying.

7. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

determining if a uniform resource locator (URL) represents a multimedia resource by comparing an extension of the URL to a known list of multimedia URL extensions or identifying one or more keywords associated with the URL.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

determining if the URL has been previously seen via comparison to a list of previously visited or currently indexed URLs of the search engine.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising:

queuing a URL for a new multimedia resource for retrieval by a multimedia crawler and retrieving it at the appropriate time.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

inspecting the retrieved multimedia resource to determine if it is a desired multimedia resource via examination of its preamble and comparing it to a list of multimedia preambles.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising:

extracting one or more of features or statistics from a desired multimedia resource.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising:

relaying multimedia resource metadata to the search engine for indexing or querying.

14. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

identifying a series of consecutive events comprising a user access of a resource location in the network and a user access of a multimedia object at the resource location;

determining a relationship between the resource location and the multimedia object; and

providing the determined relationship to the search engine to aid in resource indexing.

15. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

identifying a frequency at which a user accesses a resource in the network; and

providing the identified frequency to the search engine to aid in ranking search results.

16. A method of discovering multimedia resources on a network from user search data, comprising:

collecting a Uniform Resource Locators (URL) visited by a user from a toolbar data store associated with the user;

identifying a multimedia item associated with the URL;

mining multimedia resource information associated with the URL;

determining whether the URL has been previously processed by comparing the URL to a list of URLs that are currently maintained by a search engine;

forwarding the URL, upon determining that the URL has not been previously processed, to a search engine that includes a search crawler;

retrieving the multimedia item associated with the URL;

examining the multimedia item and its associated URL to determine whether the multimedia item is to be indexed; and

extracting one or more features of the multimedia item and indexing the multimedia item using the extracted features

wherein examining the multimedia item comprises examining the preamble of the multimedia item and comparing it to a list of multimedia preambles.