Techniques for ranking character searches

• US 9,830,362 B2
• Filed: 12/15/2014
• Issued: 11/28/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Tseng, Kuan-Yu, Huang, Lin-Shun, Chiang, Yueh-Hsuan, Chen, Chun-Yang
• Primary Examiner(s): Coby, Frantz
• Application Number:
  US14/570,146
• Publication Number:
  US 20150112977A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,079 Days
• Field of Search: 707723, 707735, 707748, 707756, 707758, 707602, 709201, 709203, 709213, 709217
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Techniques for asynchronous rendering are described. An apparatus may comprise a character set converter application, an index server, and a ranking application. The character set converter application may receive a search string comprised of one or more first character set characters, and convert the search string to one or more second character set characters that are different than the first character set. The index server may execute a search on the converted search string to obtain ranked individual search results. The ranking application may compare any first character set characters in the ranked individual search results to the first character set characters in the search string and sub-rank the ranked individual search results based on the strength of any matches. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising:

a processor circuit;

a character set converter application operative on the processor circuit to receive a first character set search string comprising one or more characters in a first character set, and convert the one or more characters in the first character set to one or more characters in a second character set;

an index server operative to execute a search using the one or more characters in the second character set to obtain one or more second character set ranked search results; and

a ranking application operative on the index server to re-rank the results of the search in the second character set based on the number of appearances of characters from the first character set in each result in the search results in the second character set.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, the first character set and the second character set comprising any one of a Roman character set, a Chinese character set, a Japanese character set, a Russian character set, a Korean character set, a European character set, and an Arabic character set.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, the search string comprising one or more characters of the first character set and one or more characters of the second character set.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, the ranking application further operative to:

raise a ranking of an individual ranked search result when there is a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual ranked search result;

lower the ranking of an individual ranked search result when there is not a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual ranked search result; and

leave the ranking of an individual ranked search result unchanged when there is no first character set character in the search string.

5. The apparatus of claim 4, the ranking application further operative to:

determine how many first character set characters in the search string and first character set characters in the individual ranked search result match;

assign a highest ranking to the individual ranked search result when all the first character set characters in the search string match with first character set characters in the individual ranked search result; and

assign a raised ranking, but not a highest ranking, to the individual ranked search result when some of the first character set characters in the search string match with first character set characters in the individual ranked search result.

6. The apparatus of claim 5, the ranking application further operative to re-rank the ranked search results based on the ranking obtained by the ranking application.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, the ranking application further operative to return the re-ranked individual ranked search results to a requesting device.

8. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving a first character set search string comprising one or more characters in a first character set;

converting the one or more characters in the first character set to one or more characters in a second character set;

executing a search using the one or more characters in the second character set to obtain one or more second character set ranked search results;

determining that the one or more ranked search results includes a character in the first character set; and

re-ranking the one or more second character set ranked search results based on a match strength, the match strength being determined based on the number of appearances of characters from the first character set in each result in the search results in the second character set.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, the first character set and the second character set comprising any one of a Roman character set, a Chinese character set, a Japanese character set, a Russian character set, a Korean character set, a European character set, and an Arabic character set.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, the search string comprising one or more characters of the first character set and one or more characters of the second character set.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, ranking the one or more ranked search results comprising:

raising a ranking of an individual ranked search result when there is a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual ranked search result;

lowering the ranking of an individual ranked search result when there is not a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual ranked search result; and

leaving the ranking of an individual ranked search result unchanged when there is no first character set character in the search string.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, ranking the one or more ranked search results further comprising:

determining how many first character set characters in the search string and first character set characters in the individual ranked search result match;

assigning a highest ranking to the individual ranked search result when all the first character set characters in the search string match with first character set characters in the individual ranked search result; and

assigning a raised ranking, but not a highest ranking, to the individual ranked search result when some of the first character set characters in the search string match with first character set characters in the individual ranked search result.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, comprising re-ranking the ranked search results based on the ranking of the one or more ranked search results.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, comprising returning the re-ranked individual ranked search results to a requesting device.

15. A system comprising a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by processor circuitry, cause a system to:

receive a first character set search string comprising one or more characters in a first character set;

convert the one or more characters in the first character set to one or more characters in a second character set;

execute a search using the one or more characters in the second character set to obtain one or more second character set ranked search results;

determine that the one or more ranked search results includes a character in the first character set; and

re-rank the one or more second character set ranked search results based on a match strength, the match strength being determined based on the number of appearances of characters from the first character set in each result in the search results in the second character set.

16. The system of claim 15, the first character set and the second character set comprising any one of a Roman character set, a Chinese character set, a Japanese character set, a Russian character set, a Korean character set, a European character set, and an Arabic character set.

17. The system of claim 15, the search string comprising one or more characters of the first character set and one or more characters of the second character set.

18. The system of claim 15, comprising further instructions that, when executed by the processor circuitry, cause the system to:

raise a ranking of an individual ranked search result when there is a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual ranked search result;

lower the ranking of an individual ranked search result when there is not a match between a first character set character in the search string and a first character set character in the individual ranked search result; and

leave the ranking of an individual ranked search result unchanged when there is no first character set character in the search string.

19. The system of claim 18, comprising further instructions that, when executed by the processor circuitry, cause the system to:

determine how many first character set characters in the search string and first character set characters in the individual ranked search result match;

assign a highest ranking to the individual ranked search result when all the first character set characters in the search string match with first character set characters in the individual ranked search result; and

assign a raised ranking, but not a highest ranking, to the individual ranked search result when some of the first character set characters in the search string match with first character set characters in the individual ranked search result.

20. The system of claim 19, comprising further instructions that, when executed by the processor circuitry, cause the system to re-rank the ranked search results based on the ranking of the one or more ranked search results.

21. The system of claim 20, comprising further instructions that, when executed by the processor circuitry, cause the system to return the re-ranked individual ranked search results to a requesting device.