Search engine with geographical verification processing

• US 9,177,061 B2
• Filed: 10/24/2012
• Issued: 11/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 08/29/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Enpulz LLC
• Inventors: Bennett, James D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hwa, Shyue Jiunn
• Application Number:
  US13/659,495
• Publication Number:
  US 20130046746A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,105 Days
• Field of Search: 707/712
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/29 Geographical information databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

In most of the Internet search operations, unwanted search results can be eliminated to reduce the high volume of the Internet traffic, and make the search operation highly efficient, according to the present invention. The present invention proposes a two step approach. The first step is to achieve the high relevance of the search results by search region restricted search operation. The second step, further adds high degree of relevance to the search results by the contact address correlation with a reliable reference address or the legitimate contact address eliminating the crap and squatter sites from the search result list. The region restricted search does searching in a selected geographical region. Thus the region restricted search operation minimizes the search time and huge volume of Internet traffic, which is likely to impair the overall Internet performance.

Claims

1. A search engine system that facilitates searching for content on the Internet, the search engine server comprising:

a communication interface through which search criteria from a client device of a user is received;

a reverse index database containing text data gathered from web sites during a web crawling process, the text data corresponding to actual text extracted from the web sites;

a processor configured to compare at least some information from a Whois database to at least portions of the text data extracted from the web sites to identify at least one of correlations and contradictions between the text data and the information from the Whois database; and

the processor produces a search results for the client device based on the identified correlations and contradictions between the text data and the information from the Whois database, the search criteria, and geographical user data, including;

excluding from the search results text data that has location content that contradicts corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database; and

including text data in the search results that has location content that positively correlates with corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database.

2. The search engine system of claim 1, wherein the processor performs the comparison in an effort to penalize those of the plurality of web sites associated with questionable geographical location data.

3. The search engine system of claim 1, wherein the at least portions of the text data comprising geographical location related data.

4. The search engine system of claim 3, wherein the production of the search results involves a consideration of the geographical location related data and the geographical user data.

5. The search engine system of claim 4, wherein the geographical user data comprises a geographical region provided by the user.

6. The search engine system of claim 4, wherein the geographical user data comprises a geographical region associated with the user as determined by the processor.

7. The search engine system of claim 1, wherein the processor, based on results of the comparison, penalizes a portion of the plurality of web sites with respect to the search results.

8. A search engine system that facilitates searching for content on the Internet, the search engine server comprising:

a communication interface through which search text and related search setting data from a client device of a user is received;

a reverse index database containing text data gathered from web sites during a web crawling process, the text data corresponding to actual text extracted from the web sites;

a processor configured to compare at least some information from a Whois database to at least portions of the text data extracted from the web sites to identify at least one of correlations and contradictions between the text data and the information from the Whois database; and

the processor produces a search results for the client device based on the identified correlations and contradictions between the text data and the information from the Whois database, the search criteria and the related search setting data, including;

excluding from the search results text data that has location content that contradicts corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database; and

including text data in the search results that has location content that positively correlates with corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database.

9. The search engine system of claim 8, wherein the at least portions of the text data comprising geographical location related data.

10. The search engine system of claim 9, wherein the production of the search results involves a comparison of the geographical location related data with the related search setting data, wherein the related search setting data comprises data identifying a geographical setting.

11. The search engine system of claim 8, wherein the processor periodically reevaluates the comparison to account for changes to one or both of the text data and the information from the Whois database.

12. The search engine system of claim 8, wherein the processor performs the comparison in an effort to penalize those of the plurality of web sites associated with questionable geographical location data.

13. A method performed by a search engine system that facilitates searching for content on the Internet, the method comprising:

receiving search text and related search setting data from a client device of a user;

storing text data gathered from web sites during a web crawling process that interacts with the web sites in a reverse index database, the text data corresponding to actual text of the plurality of web sites;

comparing at least some information from a Whois database to at least portions of the text data to identify at least one of correlations and contradictions between the text data and the information from the Whois database; and

producing a search results for the client device based on the identified correlations and contradictions between the text data and the information from the Whois database, the search text and the related search setting data, including;

excluding from the search results text data that has location content that contradicts corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database; and

including text data in the search results that has location content that positively correlates with corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the at least portions of the text data comprising geographical location related data.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the comparison is performed in an attempt to verify the geographical location related data.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the production of the search results involves a comparison of the geographical location related data with the related search setting data, wherein the related search setting data comprises data identifying a geographical setting.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the processing infrastructure crawls the Whois database to gather the at least some information.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein the processing infrastructure performs the comparison in an effort to penalize those of the plurality of web sites associated with questionable data.

19. A method performed by search engine system that facilitates searching for content on the Internet, the method comprising:

receiving search text and related search setting data from a client device of a user;

storing text data gathered from web sites during a web crawling process that interacts with the web sites in a reverse index database, the text data corresponding to actual text of the plurality of web sites;

accessing related information from a Whois database corresponding to each of the web sites, wherein the related information is related to the text data corresponding to the actual text of the web sites;

evaluating at least a portion of the related information to identify at least one of correlations and contradictions between the text data and the related information from the Whois database; and

producing a search results for the client device both based on the search text, the related search setting data, and the evaluation, including;

excluding from the search results text data that has location content that contradicts corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database; and

including text data in the search results that has location content that positively correlates with corresponding geographic location information of the Whois database.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the evaluation is performed in a verification process.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the verification process is related to geographic location information associated with each of the plurality of web sites.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the verification process comprises an attempt to identify those of the plurality of web sites with questionable geographical location data.

23. The method of claim 19, wherein at least portions of the text data comprises geographical location related data, the related search setting data comprises data identifying a geographical setting, and the production of the search results involves a comparison of the geographical location related data with the related search setting data.

24. The method of claim 19, wherein the processing infrastructure crawls the Whois database to gather the related information.