Static rankings for search queries on online social networks

• US 9,317,614 B2
• Filed: 07/30/2013
• Issued: 04/19/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/30/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Stewart, Allan
• Primary Examiner(s): Phillips, III, Albert
• Application Number:
  US13/954,695
• Publication Number:
  US 20150039596A1
• Time in Patent Office: 994 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9024 Graphs; Linked lists G06F16/9027 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method includes accessing a set of queries of an online social network received from one or more users of the online social network, retrieving for each query a number of objects that match at least a portion of the query from one or more data stores associated with the online social network, where each object is associated with a pre-determined static-score based on a static-scoring algorithm, calculating a final-score for each retrieved object based on a final-scoring algorithm, and determining one or more revised static-scores for one or more of the retrieved objects based on a comparison of the final-scores and the static-scores of the retrieved objects.

Claims

1. A method comprising, by one or more computing devices:

accessing a first set of queries of an online social network received from one or more users of the online social network, each query being a particular type of query;

retrieving, for each query of the first set of queries, a first number of objects that match at least a portion of the query from one or more data stores, each data store storing one or more objects associated with the online social network, wherein each object is associated with a pre-determined static-score calculated by a static-scoring algorithm, the static-score for each object being based at least in part on the type of the respective query, and wherein retrieving the first number of objects is based on the static-scores of the objects;

calculating, for each query, a final-score for each retrieved object based on a final-scoring algorithm; and

determining one or more revised static-scores for one or more of the retrieved objects based on a comparison of the final-scores calculated based on the final-scoring algorithm and the static-scores of the retrieved objects calculated based on the static-scoring algorithm, wherein the static-scores are revised, for each retrieved object, in order to reduce the difference between a static-rank of the retrieve object based on its static-score and a final-rank of the retrieved object based on its final-score.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

revising the static-scoring algorithm based on the revised static-scores, wherein the static-scoring algorithm is revised to calculate pre-determined static-scores for objects based on one or more of the revised static-scores of one or more of the retrieved objects, respectively.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the pre-determined static-score of each object is a pre-determined ranking of the object for a particular type of query.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein calculating the final-score for each retrieved object based on the final-scoring algorithm comprises ranking all of the retrieved objects.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the one or more revised static-scores for one or more of the retrieved objects comprises:

determining a difference between the pre-determined static-score for each object and the calculated final-score for each object; and

revising one or more of the static-scores of one or more of the objects based on the determined differences.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

accessing a social graph comprising a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges connecting the nodes, each of the edges between two of the nodes representing a single degree of separation between them, the nodes comprising;

a plurality of user nodes corresponding to a plurality of users of the online social network, respectively; and

a plurality of concept nodes corresponding to a plurality of concepts associated with the online social network, respectively;

wherein each query in the first set of queries corresponds to a particular user node, and each retrieved object corresponds to a user node or concept node of the plurality of nodes.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein each query of the first set of queries is a structured query comprising references to one or more selected nodes from the plurality of nodes and one or more selected edges from the plurality of edges.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein each query of the first set of queries is an unstructured text query comprising one or more n-grams.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

parsing each query in the first set of queries using a first parsing algorithm to generate a query command based on each query, each query command comprising one or more query constraints, each query constraint being for a specified number of objects of a specified object-type as specified by the first parsing algorithm.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein retrieving the first number of objects that match at least a portion of the query from one or more data scores comprises, for each query:

accessing one or more data stores storing objects of the specified object-types of the query constraints of the query command corresponding to the query; and

identifying one or more objects from the accessed data stores that match at least a portion of the query constraints of the query command corresponding to the query.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the specified object-type is selected from a group consisting of:

a user, a photo, a post, a webpage, an application, a location, or a user group.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the first set of queries comprises a plurality of archived queries from a plurality of users of the online social network.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein each data store is selected from a group consisting of:

a users data store, a photos data store, a posts data store, a webpages data store, an applications data store, a locations data store, or a user-groups data store.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the final-score for each retrieved object is calculated based at least on a social-graph affinity associated with the retrieved object.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the final-score for each retrieved object is calculated based at least on a relevance to the query associated with the retrieved object.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the final-score for each retrieved object is calculated based at least on a user history associated with one of the users of the online social network, wherein the user is associated with the query.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

ranking the retrieved objects based on the calculated final-score for each retrieved object; and

generating one or more search results corresponding to one or more retrieved objects based at least in part on the ranking.

18. One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying software that is operable when executed to:

access a first set of queries of an online social network received from one or more users of the online social network, each query being a particular type of query;

retrieve, for each query of the first set of queries, a first number of objects that match at least a portion of the query from one or more data stores, each data store storing one or more objects associated with the online social network, wherein each object is associated with a pre-determined static-score calculated by a static-scoring algorithm, the static-score for each object being based at least in part on the type of the respective query, and wherein retrieving the first number of objects is based on the static-scores of the objects;

calculate, for each query, a final-score for each retrieved object based on a final-scoring algorithm; and

determine one or more revised static-scores for one or more of the retrieved objects based on a comparison of the final-scores calculated based on the final-scoring algorithm and the static-scores of the retrieved objects calculated based on the static-scoring algorithm, wherein the static-scores are revised, for each retrieved object, in order to reduce the difference between a static-rank of the retrieve object based on its static-score and a final-rank of the retrieved object based on its final-score.

19. A system comprising:

one or more processors; and

a memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to;

access a first set of queries of an online social network received from one or more users of the online social network;

retrieve, for each query of the first set of queries, a first number of objects that match at least a portion of the query from one or more data stores, each data store storing one or more objects associated with the online social network, wherein each object is associated with a pre-determined static-score calculated by a static-scoring algorithm, the static-score for each object being based at least in part on the type of the respective query, and wherein retrieving the first number of objects is based on the static-scores of the objects;

calculate, for each query, a final-score for each retrieved object based on a final-scoring algorithm; and

determine one or more revised static-scores for one or more of the retrieved objects based on a comparison of the final-scores calculated based on the final-scoring algorithm and the static-scores of the retrieved objects calculated based on the static-scoring algorithm, wherein the static-scores are revised, for each retrieved object, in order to reduce the difference between a static-rank of the retrieve object based on its static-score and a final-rank of the retrieved object based on its final-score.