Identifying media content in queries

• US 8,005,826 B1
• Filed: 04/30/2007
• Issued: 08/23/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Brown, David A., Patel, Manish G., Gupta, Neha, Blackburn, John, Taylor, Thomas H., Sahami, Mehran, Gossweiler, Richard C. III
• Primary Examiner(s): Cottingham; John R.
• Assistant Examiner(s): REYES, MARIELA D
• Application Number:
  US11/742,258
• Time in Patent Office: 1,576 Days
• Field of Search: 707/722, 707/723, 707/728
• US Class Current: 707/723
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/43 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/438 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/487 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/489 using time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/738 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/78 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/787 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4782 Web browsing , e.g. WebTV
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4828 for searching program descriptors retrieval of video data G06F16/739

Abstract

A computer-implemented method includes receiving a query at a central information provider, identifying media-related terms in the query that indicate the query relates to one or more media-related objects, and providing media-specific results in response to the query associated with one or more programs or program staff.

Claims

1. A method for obtaining media-related information, comprising:

receiving a request at a central information provider from a client device over a network;

identifying the request as media-related based on the presence in the request of terms that relate to one or more media-related objects;

in response to identifying the request as media-related, determining that one or more additional terms have a correlation with one or more of the terms from the request, wherein the one or more additional terms are terms that have different word roots than the one or more terms from the request and are terms that have been determined to occur frequently in combination with one or more terms from the request;

in response to identifying the request as media-related, querying, with one or more of the terms from the request and the additional terms, one or more media-specific corpuses that provide media-specific results;

in response to identifying the request as media-related, querying, with one or more of the terms from the request and a predetermined term descriptive of media, one or more non-media-directed corpuses that provide non-media-specific results, wherein the predetermined term limits the non-media-specific results to media-related results; and

in response to identifying the request as media-related, formatting the media-specific results and the media-related results differently than if the request was not identified as media-related including formatting and transmitting the media-specific results received from the media-specific corpuses and the media-related results received from the non-media-specific corpuses for display as search results and as a program guide grid, wherein;

the search results include one or more program episodes,

the program guide grid includes one or more of the program episodes from the search results,

the program guide grid is defined by a time axis and a channel axis, and

the search results and the program guide grid are to be displayed simultaneously next to each other.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the request as a media-related request comprises comparing words or word sets in the request to one or more whitelists of media-related terms.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the search results are formatted in a plurality of groupings based on programs of the program episodes.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying time-based terms in the request and wherein the transmitted media-specific results and the transmitted media-related results correspond to the time-based terms.

5. A computer-implemented system, comprising:

a request processor to receive and parse search requests from remote devices over a network, and to identify media-related terms in the search requests, and in response to identification of the media-related terms in the search requests, generate corresponding queries that include the media-related terms as well as additional terms having a correlation with the media-related terms and predetermined terms, wherein the one or more additional terms are terms that have different word roots than the one or more terms from the request and are terms that have been determined to occur frequently in combination with one or more terms from the request;

a search engine connected to the request processor to receive the queries associated with the search requests, query one or more indices corresponding to media-related content with ones of the queries that include the media-related terms and the additional terms, and query one or more indices corresponding to non-media-specific content with ones of the queries that include the media-related terms and the predetermined terms to limit the non-media-specific content to media content;

an interface to receive media-related search results from the search engine and format the media-related search results for display on the remote devices, wherein the format is different than if media-related terms were not identified in the search requests; and

a page formatter configured to, in response to the request processor identifying media-related terms in the search request, combine code for creating an electronic program guide grid and the media-related search results for simultaneous display, wherein;

the format of the media-related search results includes a list of one or more program episodes,

the electronic program guide grid includes one or more of the program episodes from the media-related search results,

the electronic program guide grid is defined by a time axis and a channel axis, and

the media-related search results and the electronic program guide grid are to be displayed simultaneously next to each other.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the page formatter is programmed to generate a plurality of groupings of the media-related search results, and wherein the media-related search results are grouped by programs of the program episodes.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the request processor is further configured to identify the media-related terms by comparing words or word sets in the search requests to one or more whitelists or blacklists of media-related terms.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein the request processor is further configured to identify the media-related terms by submitting words or word sets in the search requests to a machine learning system that has been trained using information known to be media related.