Method and apparatus for determining the significance and relevance of a web page, or a portion thereof

• US 8,661,031 B2
• Filed: 06/21/2007
• Issued: 02/25/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 06/23/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rohit Chandra
• Original Assignee: Rohit Chandra
• Inventors: Chandra, Rohit
• Primary Examiner(s): Shanmugasundaram, Kannan
• Application Number:
  US11/766,669
• Publication Number:
  US 20080005101A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,441 Days
• Field of Search: 707 1- 5, 707/10, 707/100, 707/722, 707/723, 707/727, 707/730
• US Class Current: 707/730
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

A method for determining the significance of a web page, or a portion thereof, is disclosed. Accordingly, a search engine or some other application analyzes user-generated highlights (as well as user-provided comments associated with the highlights) of a document to determine a document relevance score (e.g., Highlight Rank) for the document containing the user-generated highlights. The particular algorithm for determining the document relevance score will vary depending upon the particular implementation, but may generally be based upon an analysis of the number and quality of user-generated highlights and associated comments within a document. Based on this analysis, the search engine assigns the document a document relevance score, which is used for processing the document in accordance with instructions associated with a search query. For example, the document relevance score may be used in selecting and ordering documents returned in search results for a particular search query.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

a search engine receiving a user-specified search query, said search query specifying one or more search terms;

the search engine processing the search query by identifying a set of documents that satisfy the search query;

the search engine providing the set of documents that satisfy the search query, ordered, at least in part, according to a document relevance score that is based on an analysis of past user-generated highlights,

wherein a user-generated highlight comprises a visual modification of a user selected portion of a web-enabled document by a highlighting application,

wherein the user manually controls the highlighting application to visually indicate the user selected portion, and

wherein information about the past user-generated highlights has been stored in a repository, and

wherein the document relevance score of a document is determined by a plurality of weighted factors comprising;

a number of past highlights made on the document, a number of users that made highlights on the document, a number of comments made on the document, a number of times the document has been shared, a number of times the document has been viewed, a past rating of the document, a content of the document, a content of a past highlight, a content of a specific sections of the document, a relevance of the users that contributed an activity associated with the document, a set of ratings of contributing users, a point in time when the activities were performed, and a source of the document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein each user-generated highlight is created using a pointer on a screen.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each user-generated highlight changes the color around the use selected text in the document having the user-selected text.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the user-selected text includes a non-hyperlinked text.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the document relevance score is based at least in part on a number of unique users who made a highlight in the document.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the document relevance score is based at least in part on number of comments associated with a highlight in the document.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the document relevance score is based at least in part on a number of relevance flags associated with the document.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the document relevance score is based at least in parson a number of times the document has been emailed.

9. The method claim 1, wherein the document relevance score is based at least in part on a number of times the document has been copied.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the document relevance score is based at least in part on a weighting factor applied to each user-generated highlight.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the weighting factor is based at least in part rating of the user that created each user-generated highlight.

12. The method of claim 11, herein the rating of the user is ter mined at least in part on the number of highlights made by the user.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the rating of the user is determined at least in part on a user-rating given to the user by other people.