System and/or method for obtaining of user generated content boxes

• US 8,856,097 B2
• Filed: 01/30/2008
• Issued: 10/07/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 01/30/2008
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Ravikumar, Shanmugasundaram, Raghavan, Prabhakar, Ramakrishnan, Raghu, Tomkins, Andrew
• Primary Examiner(s): Mamillapalli, Pavan
• Application Number:
  US12/022,980
• Publication Number:
  US 20090192988A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,442 Days
• Field of Search: 707/736, 707/706, 705/50, 715/206
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions

Abstract

The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a process for receiving, evaluating and selecting of content modules such as content summary boxes and landing pages for display on network-accessible search engine results page. In one particular example, potential content providers may be provided with incentives and guidelines for the preparation of content summary boxes and landing pages over an electronic communications network, and the resulting submissions can be ranked and published in conjunction with the display of a search engine results page over the network.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

publishing an offer of an incentive for content providers to prepare content modules for at least one subject, the offer specifying at least one designated subject for which at least one of the content modules is requested, the content modules comprising content relating to query subject matter of a search engine query, wherein at least one of the content providers comprises a computer user, the content modules comprising at least one link to an external web page;

publishing at least one guideline for creation of the content modules to the at least one of the content providers;

receiving the content modules from a plurality of the content providers via an electronic computer network;

ranking the content modules based on ranking criteria; and

in response to receiving the search engine query;

publishing search results responsive to the query subject matter;

publishing at least one of the ranked content modules based, at least in part, on the query subject matter; and

providing the incentive to the content providers in response to receiving a user selection of the at least one link to the external web gage of the content modules.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the content modules comprise content summary boxes, and further comprising including landing page access information in the content summary box.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising:

providing an incentive for content providers to prepare landing pages for a subject;

receiving content-provider-prepared landing pages from a plurality of content providers via the network;

selecting at least one of the landing pages provided by the content providers for presentation over the network in response to use of the landing page access information by a user to whom the at least one of the selected content modules is displayed; and

publishing the at least one of the selected content modules to a subset of the search engine users based, at least in part, on the query subject matter.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the incentive comprises one or more of:

indication of authorship for one or more of the content modules;

monetary compensation based on user access to the one or more of the content modules;

one or more advertisements for a content provider-chosen business, association, activity, group, website, product or service;

or

inclusion of paid content in the one or more of the content modules.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein said selecting comprises:

monitoring user responses relating to one or more of the content modules;

ranking the one or more of the content modules relative to at least one other of content modules directed to the same subject based at least in part on monitored user responses.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein one or more of the content modules is associated with the subject and is displayed to the subset of search engine users based, at least in part, on the subject of their queries.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising providing the at least one guideline over the network to a plurality of content providers.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the incentive comprises a monetary payment.

9. An apparatus comprising:

a server system for receiving content-provider-prepared content modules from a plurality of content providers via an electronic computer network, the content modules comprising content relating to query subject matter of a search engine query, at least one of the content providers comprising a computer user, wherein an offer of an incentive and at least one guideline for creation of the content modules are to be published to the content providers, the offer to specify at least one designated subject for which at least one of the content modules is to be requested, the content modules comprising at least one link to an external web page; and

the server system to;

rank the content modules based on ranking criteria;

wherein in response to receiving the search engine query;

publishing search results responsive to the query subject matter;

publishing at least one of the ranked content modules based, at least in part, on the query subject matter; and

providing the incentive the content providers in response to receiving a user selection of the at least one link to the external web page of the content modules.

10. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the content modules comprise content summary boxes, and wherein the content summary boxes include landing page access information.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the server system is further adapted to:

receive content-provider-prepared landing pages from a plurality of content providers via the network, the content providers to be provided with an incentive to prepare landing pages for a subject;

select at least one of the landing pages provided by the content providers for presentation over the network in response to use of the landing page access information by a user to whom the at least one of the selected content modules is displayed; and

publish the at least one of the selected content modules to a subset of the search engine users based on the query subject matter.

12. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the incentive comprises one or more of:

indication of authorship for one or more of the content modules;

monetary compensation based on user access to the one or more of the content modules;

one or more advertisements for a content provider-chosen business, association, activity, group, website, product or service;

or

inclusion of paid content in the one or more of the content modules.

13. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the selection of one or more of the content modules is based at least in part on:

monitored user responses relating to a selected content module by the users;

a ranking of the selected content module relative to at least one other content module directed to the same subject based at least in part on monitored user responses.

14. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the server system is adapted to display one or more of the content modules at least in part based on a relation between the subject of the one or more of the content modules and the search engine query.

15. An article comprising:

one or more memories comprising machine readable instructions stored thereon which are executable by a computing platform to;

process content-provider-prepared content modules to be received from a plurality of content providers via an electronic computer network, the content providers to be provided with an incentive to prepare content summaries for at least one subject, the content modules comprising content relating to query subject matter of a search engine query, at least one of the content providers comprising a computer user, wherein an offer of an incentive and at least one guideline for creation of the content modules are to be published to the content providers, the offer to specify at least one designated subject for which at least one of the content modules is to be requested, the content modules comprising at least one link to an external web page;

ranking the content modules based on ranking criteria; and

in response to receiving the search engine query;

publishing search results responsive to the query subject matter;

publishing at least one of the ranked content modules based, at least in part, on the query subject matter; and

providing the incentive the content providers in response to receiving a user selection of the at least one link to the external web page of the content modules.

16. The article of claim 15 wherein the content modules comprise content summary boxes, and the instructions are further executable by the computing platform to include landing page access information in the content summary box.

17. The article of claim 16, wherein the instructions are further executable by the computing platform to:

provide an incentive for content providers to prepare landing pages for a subject;

receive content-provider-prepared landing pages from a plurality of content providers via the network;

select at least one of the landing pages to be provided by the content providers for presentation over the network in response to use of the landing page access information by a user to whom the at least one of the selected content modules is to be displayed; and

publish the at least one of the selected content modules to a subset of the search engine users based on the query subject matter.

18. The article of claim 15 wherein the incentive comprises one or more of:

indication of authorship for one or more of the content modules;

monetary compensation based on user access to the one or more of the content modules;

one or more advertisements for a content provider-chosen business, association, activity, group, website, product or service;

or

inclusion of paid content in the one or more of the content modules.

19. The article of claim 15 wherein the selection is to be identified, at least in part, by:

monitoring user responses relating to a selected content module;

ranking the selected content module relative to at least one other content module directed to the same subject based at least in part on monitored user responses.

20. A method comprising:

providing at least one template for the preparation of content summary boxes to a plurality of content providers over an electronic computer network, wherein at least one of the content providers comprises a computer user, the content modules comprising at least one link to an external web page;

publishing an offer of at least one incentive, the at least one incentive comprising one or more of;

indication of authorship for at least one of the content summary boxes,

monetary compensation based on user access to the at least one of the content summary boxes,

one or more advertisements for a content provider-chosen business, association, activity, group, website, product or service, or

inclusion of paid content in the at least one of the content summary boxes;

publishing at least one guideline for creation of the content modules to the at least one of the content providers;

receiving content-provider-prepared content summary boxes from said plurality of content providers via the network;

selecting at least one of the content summary boxes provided by the content providers, the selecting being based at least in part on the results of monitoring of user responses to the content summary box; and

ranking the content modules based on ranking criteria; and

in response to receiving the search engine query;

publishing search results responsive to the query subject matter;

publishing at least one of the ranked content modules based, at least in part, on the query subject matter; and

providing the incentive the content providers in response to receiving a user selection of the at least one link to the external web page of the content modules.