System for identifying geographically relevant advertisements from a search query

• US 8,145,645 B2
• Filed: 05/20/2010
• Issued: 03/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yahoo AD Tech LLC
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Demir, Ramazan, Patel, Devesh, Riise, Soren, Delli Santi, Jim W.
• Primary Examiner(s): Le, Debbie
• Application Number:
  US12/784,240
• Publication Number:
  US 20100299200A1
• Time in Patent Office: 677 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/748
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements

Abstract

A system and method are disclosed for identifying relevant content/advertisements to be displayed in response to receiving a search query. The relevant advertisements may be identified based on the contextual relevance compared with the root term of the search query and based on the geographic relevance as compared with a location term of the search query and/or a localness associated with the root term. The search query may be assigned a location identifier based on the location term or based on the localness, which may be used to expand the geographic range for ranking and selecting relevant content/advertisements.

Claims

1. In a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein data representing instructions executable by a programmed processor for identifying ads to be provided, the instructions operative for:

receiving a query;

identifying a root term from the query and a location term from the query when available;

identifying a location from the query as the location term when the location term is included with the query;

determining a localness value of the root term;

locating relevant geographies using the localness value of the root term or from the location from the query when the location term is included with the query;

accessing an advertisement database to identify advertisements by;

matching the ads from the advertisement database based on the located relevant geographies; and

matching the ads from the advertisement database based on a contextual comparison with the root term from the query;

ranking the matched ads; and

selecting higher ranked matched ads to be provided.

2. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the selected higher ranked matched ads to be provided are displayed with a search results page in response to the query.

3. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the relevant geographies are located solely from the localness value when the query does not include a location term.

4. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the ranking comprises determining a closest geographical match based on the located relevant geographies and determining a closest contextual comparison with the root term.

5. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the localness comprises a range of locations.

6. A computerized system identifying advertisements, the system comprising:

a search engine coupled with a network and configured to receive a search query over the network, wherein the search query is analyzed to identify contextual matches with the search query;

a local intent analyzer coupled with the search engine and configured to determine a location identifier for the search query;

an advertiser database comprising available advertisements; and

a matching engine, with a processor, coupled with the advertiser database and the local intent analyzer, wherein the matching engine is configured to compare the available advertisements with the contextual matches to identify contextually relevant advertisements from the advertiser database, further wherein the matching engine is configured to utilize the local intent analyzer to compare the available advertisements with the determined location identifier from the query, further wherein the comparisons identify geo-relevant advertisements.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein the local intent analyzer comprises:

a location extractor processor that parses the search query for any location information; and

an intent determiner processor that determines if the location information includes the location identifier.

8. The system of claim 6 wherein the advertiser database further comprises an advertisement provider that is coupled with the matching engine and the search engine.

9. The system of claim 8 wherein the advertisement provider provides the geo-relevant advertisements to the search engine for display with a search results page for the search query.

10. The system of claim 9 wherein the advertisement provider comprises an advertisement filter that analyzes the comparisons and filters out the available advertisements that are not contextually relevant and filters out the available advertisements that do not match the determined location identifier.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein the advertisement filter further combines the filtered advertisements to identify the geo-relevant advertisements.

12. The system of claim 6 further comprising a user query database configured to store past search queries including the data for comparisons resulting in the identification of the contextual matches.

13. The system of claim 6 further comprising a geographic database coupled with the local intent analyzer and configured to store a geographic range for the location identifier.

14. The system of claim 13 wherein the geo-relevant advertisements are determined to be within the geographic range.

15. The system of claim 6 wherein the search engine and the local intent analyzer comprise a single processor.

16. The system of claim 6 wherein the location identifier comprises an explicit location from the search query or comprises a location band based on the search query.

17. A method for identifying relevant advertisements, the method comprising:

receiving a search query, wherein the search query includes at least a root term, wherein a location is identified from the root term when a location term is not included as part of the search query;

accessing advertisement candidate listings from an advertiser database;

comparing the root term with the advertisement candidate listings to determine a contextual relevancy for the advertisement candidate listings;

identifying relevant advertisement candidates from the advertisement candidate listings, wherein the relevant advertisement candidates have a determined contextual relevancy with the root term;

comparing the location or location term with geographic associations from the identified relevant advertisement candidates;

identifying geo-relevant advertisement candidates from the identified relevant advertisement candidates by matching a geographic association from the identified relevant advertisement candidates with the location or location term from the search query; and

associating the identified geo-relevant advertisement candidates with the search query.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the association of the identified geo-relevant advertisement candidates with the search query comprises displaying the identified geo-relevant advertisement candidates with search results for the search query.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein the association of the identified geo-relevant advertisement candidates with the search query comprises updating the advertisement candidate listings to associate the identified geo-relevant advertisement candidates in the advertisement candidate listings with the search query.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein the geographic associations comprise location bands which establish geo-relevance when compared with the location or location term from the search query.