Method and system for calculating importance of a block within a display page

• US 8,401,977 B2
• Filed: 01/10/2012
• Issued: 03/19/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/29/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ma, Wei-Ying, Wen, Ji-Rong, Song, Ruihua, Liu, Haifeng
• Primary Examiner(s): Chaki, Kakali
• Assistant Examiner(s): COUGHLAN, PETER D
• Application Number:
  US13/347,579
• Publication Number:
  US 20120109950A1
• Time in Patent Office: 434 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 706/11
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A method and system for identifying the importance of information areas of a display page. An importance system identifies information areas or blocks of a web page. A block of a web page represents an area of the web page that appears to relate to a similar topic. The importance system provides the characteristics or features of a block to an importance function that generates an indication of the importance of that block to its web page. The importance system “learns” the importance function by generating a model based on the features of blocks and the user-specified importance of those blocks. To learn the importance function, the importance system asks users to provide an indication of the importance of blocks of web pages in a collection of web pages.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage device storing computer-executable instructions for controlling a computing device to establish relevance of pages of search results, by a method comprising:

for each of a plurality of pages,

identifying blocks of the page; and

determining importance to the page of each identified block of the page;

receiving a search request;

identifying pages related to the search request as search results of the search request; and

for the identified pages of the search results, determining relevance of the identified page to the search request based on the block of the identified page with the highest importance; and

ranking the pages of the search results based on the determined relevance of the identified pages.

2. The computer-readable storage device of claim 1 wherein the determining of relevance includes adjusting a previously calculated relevance.

3. The computer-readable storage device of claim 1 wherein the determining of importance of each identified block includes generating a feature vector for the identified block and applying an importance function to the generated feature vector.

4. The computer-readable storage device of claim 3 wherein the importance function is learned based on user-specified importance for blocks of a collection of pages.

5. The computer-readable storage device of claim 3 wherein the feature vector includes a spatial feature.

6. The computer-readable storage device of claim 3 wherein the feature vector includes a content feature.

7. The computer-readable storage device of claim 1 wherein the identifying of the blocks of the page is performed after the identifying of pages related to the search request.

8. A computing device for establishing relevance of pages of search results, comprising:

a memory storing computer-executable instructions of;

a component that identifies blocks of a page;

a component that determines importance to a page of each identified block of the page;

a component that identifies pages related to a search request as search results of the search request;

a component that determines relevance of an identified page to the search request based on the block of the identified page with the highest importance; and

a component that ranks the pages of the search results based on the determined relevance of the identified pages; and

a processor that executes the computer-executable instructions stored in the memory.

9. The computing device of claim 8 wherein the component that determines relevance adjusts a previously calculated relevance.

10. The computing device of claim 8 wherein the component that determines importance of each identified block generates a feature vector for the identified block and applies an importance function to the generated feature vector.

11. The computing device of claim 10 wherein the importance function is learned based on user-specified importance for blocks of a collection of pages.

12. The computing device of claim 8 wherein the component that identifies blocks of the page is invoked after the component that identifies pages related to the search request.

13. A computer-readable storage device, that is not a signal, storing computer-executable instructions for controlling a computing device to select a portion of a page for display on a display device, by a method comprising:

for each of a plurality of pages,

identifying blocks of the page; and

determining importance to the page of each identified block of the page;

receiving a request to display a page; and

in response to receiving the request to display the page, selecting the block of the page with the highest determined importance; and

providing the selected block for display on the display device without providing the entire content of the page for display on the display device.

14. The computer-readable storage device of claim 13 wherein the determining of importance of each identified block includes generating a feature vector for the identified block and applying an importance function to the generated feature vector.

15. The computer-readable storage device of claim 14 wherein the importance function is learned based on user-specified importance for blocks of a collection of pages.

16. The computer-readable storage device of claim 13 wherein the identifying of the blocks of the page is performed after the request is received.

17. The computer-readable storage device of claim 13 including determining whether the entire content can fit on the display device and wherein upon determining that the entire content cannot fit on the display device, the block of the page with the highest determined importance is selected.

18. A computing device that selects a portion of a page for display on a display device, comprising:

a memory storing computer-executable instructions of;

a component that identifies blocks of a page;

a component that determines importance to a page of each identified block of the page;

a component that receives a request to display a requested page;

a component that selects the block of the requested page with the highest determined importance; and

a component that provides the selected block for display on the display device without providing the entire content of the requested page for display on the display device; and

a processor that executes the computer-executable instructions stored in the memory.

19. The computing device of claim 18 wherein the component that determines importance of each identified block generates a feature vector for the identified block and applies an importance function to the generated feature vector.

20. The computing device of claim 19 wherein the importance function is learned based on user-specified importance for blocks of a collection of pages.