Enhanced document browsing with automatically generated links based on user information and context

• US 20060005113A1
• Filed: 06/30/2004
• Published: 01/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Baluja, Shumeet, Sahami, Mehran, Mittal, Vibhu
• Granted Patent: US 7,698,626 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/207
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/94 Hypermedia Hyperlinking G06F40/134
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/10 Text processing natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30; processing or translation of natural language G06F40/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/114 Pagination
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/279 Recognition of textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/295 Named entity recognition

Abstract

Additional documents are automatically located that are relevant to an original document, such as a document being read by a user, and also potentially relevant to personal information of the user. The additional documents may be located based on descriptive information that includes personal information of the user and content information of the document being read. The additional documents, or links to the additional documents, may be incorporated into the document being read. In some implementations, the additional documents may be presented in-line with the document being read, such as through an in-link link or text snippet. The user can thus be efficiently presented with additional information that is relevant to the original document being read.

Claims

1. A method of enhancing document browsing comprising:

receiving personal information relating to a user;

generating descriptive information based on a content of a first document and the personal information;

identifying an additional document based on the descriptive information; and

generating a second document that includes at least a portion of the content of the first document and including references to the additional documents.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the references to the additional documents includes a link embedded in-line with the first document.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the link includes text describing the at least one of the references.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the link includes float-over text.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the descriptive information based on a content of the first document includes named entities matched from a list of predetermined named entities.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the list of predetermined named entities includes location names and consumer products.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the descriptive information based on a content of the first document includes terms appearing more than a predetermined number of times in the first document.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the personal information includes a geographic location of the user.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the personal information includes information provided by the user when registering an account.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the personal information includes information extracted from documents generated by the user.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the personal information is based on a browsing history of the user.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the personal information includes temporal information.

13. The method of claim 1, further including:

formatting the descriptive information as a search query; and

locating the additional documents by submitting the search query to a search engine.

14. A system comprising:

means for receiving personal information relating to a user;

means for generating descriptive information based on a content of a first document and the personal information;

means for locating additional documents based on the descriptive information; and

means for generating a second document that includes the content of the first document including references to the additional documents.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising:

means for formatting the descriptive information as a search query; and

means for locating the additional documents by submitting the search query to a search engine.

16. A method comprising:

locating at least one second document that is relevant to a first document; and

embedding the second document within the first document at a location in the first document at which the second document has relevance.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the relevance of the second document to the first document is based on a content of the first document and on personal information of an intended reader of the first document.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

generating descriptive information based on the content of the first document and the personal information; and

locating the at least one second document based on a comparison of the descriptive information to a database of documents.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the descriptive information includes named entities matched from a list of predetermined named entities.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the list of predetermined named entities includes location names and consumer products.

21. The method of claim 18, wherein the descriptive information includes terms appearing more than a pre-determined number of the times in the first document.

22. The method of claim 17, wherein the personal information includes a geographic location of the intended reader.

23. The method of claim 17, wherein the personal information includes information provided by the intended reader when registering an account.

24. The method of claim 17, wherein the personal information includes information extracted from documents generated by the intended reader.

25. The method of claim 17, wherein the personal information is based on a browsing history of the intended reader.

26. The method of claim 16, wherein the second document is embedded in the first document as a hyperlink associated with a named entity in the first document.

27. The method of claim 16, wherein embedding the second document within the first document at a location in the first document at which the second document has relevance further includes:

inserting a hyperlink that includes text describing the second document at the location.

28. A method comprising:

receiving a request for a first document from a user;

identifying a named entity in the first document;

locating a second document that is relevant to the named entity; and

presenting a modified version of the first document to the user in which a link to the second document is displayed in-line in the first document at a location in the first document proximate to the named entity to which the second document is relevant.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein locating the second document includes:

receiving personal information relating to a user;

generating descriptive information based on a content of the first document and the personal information; and

locating the second document based on the descriptive information.

30. The method of claim 28, wherein the link to the second document is displayed by modifying a display font of the named entity to indicate a hyperlink.

31. The method of claim 28, wherein the link to the second document is displayed by adding a hyperlink that includes text describing the second document at a location in the first document near the named entity.

32. A computer-readable medium containing instructions, that when executed by processing logic, cause the processing logic to:

receive a request for a first document from a user;

identify a named entity in the first document;

locate a second document that is relevant to the named entity; and

present a modified version of the first document to the user in which a link to the second document is displayed in-line in the first document at a location in the first document proximate to the named entity to which the second document is relevant.

33. A device comprising:

a memory containing programming instructions; and

a processor coupled to the memory and configured to execute the programming instructions to;

receive personal information relating to a user;

generate descriptive information based on a content of the first document and the personal information;

locate at least one additional document based on the descriptive information; and

generate a second document that includes the content of the first document modified to include references to the at least one additional document.

34. A method of enhancing a first document comprising:

receiving personal information relating to a user;

generating descriptive information based on a content of the first document and the personal information;

formatting the descriptive information as a search query; and

locating additional documents by submitting the search query to a search engine; and

generating a second document that includes the content of the first document modified to include a link embedded in-line with the first document that references at least one of the additional documents.