Content bridge for associating host content and guest content wherein guest content is determined by search

• US 20040249800A1
• Filed: 03/31/2004
• Published: 12/09/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lu, Qi
• Granted Patent: US 7,107,264 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A method and apparatus for generating content for an electronic content access system wherein requests for host content are received and responses to such requests include at least references to the host content requested and at least references to guest content related to the host content requested, comprising obtaining host content from sources external to the electronic content access system, importing the obtained host content to a host content database, distilling the host content to derive host content summary data for the host content, storing the host content summary data in an indexable structure and storing guest content in an indexable structure, such that a query using host content summary data can be applied as a search against the guest content to retrieve guest content related to the requested host content without requiring preassociated links to guest content.

Claims

1. Using a computer system with access to electronically retrievable content in digital form, a method of providing content in response to a request, comprising:

receiving a request for specific host content;

obtaining the host content;

formulating a search query based on the host content;

applying the search query to a search engine to search guest content; and

including at least a reference to at least some of the search query results with the host content returned in response to the request.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein a host content summary is used as the search query.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the host content is requested from a user system via an HTTP request including a URL referencing the host content, wherein the search query is a string of one or more keywords to which the host content relates, and wherein the guest query comprises one or more of advertisements, potentially related content references and context-specific page features.

4. A method of generating content for an electronic content access system wherein requests for host content are received and responses to such requests include at least references to the host content requested and at least references to guest content related to the host content requested, the method comprising:

obtaining host content from sources external to the electronic content access system;

importing the obtained host content to a host content database;

associating at least some of the host content with terms in a host content dictionary;

associating at least some of the host content with nodes of a host content taxonomy, wherein the host content taxonomy is a hierarchy of topics;

distilling the host content to derive host content summary data for the host content;

storing the host content summary data in an indexable structure; and

storing guest content in an indexable structure, such that a query using host content summary data for requested host content can be applied as a search against the guest content to retrieve guest content related to the requested host content without requiring that each host content object have a preassociated link with guest content to be provided in response to the request for host content.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the terms in the host content dictionary comprise one or more words.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein at least some of the terms in the host content dictionary comprise more than one word, with the more than one word having an order among the words.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein some host content is associated with more than one node of the host content taxonomy.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein distilling uses the contents of the host content dictionary and host content taxonomy.

9. The method of claim 4, wherein the host content summary data is usable as the search query to be applied against the guest content.

10. A content display, implemented by a computing device capable of displaying data retrieved over a network, the content display comprising:

host content that is obtained over the network in response to a request initiated by the computing device, wherein the request includes a reference to the host content being requested; and

guest content that is obtained over the network and is determined in part by the results of a search of guest content corpus done following receipt of the request by a host server wherein the search of the guest content corpus is based on search parameters that are based at least in part on a host content summary and the host content summary is based at least in part on a taxonomy path representing a node in a host content taxonomy with which the requested host content is associated, and terms in a host content dictionary with which the requested host content is associated.

11. The content display of claim 10, wherein the reference to the host content is a URL and the request is an HTTP page request.

12. The content display of claim 10, wherein the host content summary data is usable as the search query to be applied against the guest content.