Lateral search

• US 8,312,014 B2
• Filed: 12/27/2004
• Issued: 11/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Jollify Management Limited
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lu, Qi, Thrall, John, Ku, David
• Primary Examiner(s): Chen, Susan
• Application Number:
  US11/024,234
• Publication Number:
  US 20050192946A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,878 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/732
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation

Abstract

A search query is received. Personal information for a user is then determined. A search is performed in a general subdomain of general content using the search query. For example, the general subdomain of general content may be a WWW search. Then, a vertical subdomain is determined based on the personal information. A search is then performed in the vertical subdomain of specialized content using the search query. The search performed in the general subdomain and the search performed in the vertical subdomain generate general search results and vertical search results. The results may be combined and outputted to a client.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method of performing a search to retrieve electronic documents, using general subdomain corpus including general content and one or more vertical subdomain corpuses, each vertical subdomain corpuses including specialized content, the method comprising:

presenting a graphical user interface to a user;

receiving a search query from the user using the graphical user interface, wherein the received search query is based on a text query string inputted by the user;

determining personal information for the user;

causing a search to be performed by at least one of general search engines in the general subdomain corpus of general content using the search query, wherein the general content is not organized in specialized categories;

determining a vertical subdomain corpus from the one or more vertical subdomain corpuses based on the personal information of the user by a engine determiner of a search server coupled to a query processor and plurality of general search engines and vertical search engines; and

causing a search to be performed by at least one of the special search engine in the determined vertical subdomain corpus of specialized content using the user search query to create a customized graphic user interface, wherein the specialized content is organized by one or more tabs corresponding to the plurality of vertical engines based on the vertical subdomain determined by the engine determiner to facilitate a selection of the vertical engines searching; and

the organization of corresponding vertical engines and the selection of vertical engines into the customized graphic user interface are controlled by the same business owner of the at least one general engine.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein performing the search in the general subdomain corpus generates general uncategorized search results and wherein performing the search in the determined vertical subdomain corpus generates vertical organized search results, the method further comprising:

outputting the general search results and vertical search results.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein outputting the general search results and vertical search results comprises returning one or more links to results in the general search results and the vertical search results.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein a link in the one or more links is configured such that activation of the link results in outputting results associated with the link.

5. A search server for performing searches in general content and specialized content to retrieve electronic documents, the search server comprising:

a query processor coupled to a plurality of general search engines and vertical search engines, the query processor configured to receive a query from a user presenting a graphical user interface to the user;

wherein the received query is based on a text query string inputted by the user;

the one or more general search engines configured to perform searches in a general subdomain corpus including at least a part of the general content, wherein the general content is not organized in specialized categories;

the one or more vertical search engines configured to perform searches in a vertical subdomain corpus including at least a part of the specialized content, wherein the specialized content is organized by one or more tabs correspond to the plurality of vertical search engines determined by an engine determiner of the search server based on personal information associated with the user and input query from the user to create a customized graphic user interface for facilitating a selection of the vertical engines searching; and

wherein the organization of corresponding vertical engines and the selection of vertical engines into the customized graphic user interface are controlled by the same business owner of the at least one general engine.

6. The search server of claim 5, wherein the general search engine is configured to perform a search using the general subdomain corpus including at least a part of the general content using the query to generate general search results.

7. The search server of claim 6, wherein the query submitted to the vertical search engine is configured to perform a search using the vertical subdomain corpus including at least a part of the specialized content using the query to generate vertical search results.

8. The search server of claim 7, further comprising a page constructor configured to generate a page including the general and vertical search results.