Decentralised web annotation

• US 20070143694A1
• Filed: 12/12/2005
• Published: 06/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Boodman, Aaron, Rakowski, Brian
• Granted Patent: US 7,734,610 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/760
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation

Abstract

Annotations relating to web sites may be based on blog posts relating to the web sites. A user viewing a web site may concurrently view related blog posts about the web site. More particularly, in one implementation, a method includes detecting when a user visits a web page and receiving, in response to the detection, a group of blog posts that link to the web page. The method further includes displaying an indication of the group of blog posts to the user while the user is visiting the web site.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, from a search engine, a plurality of annotations that link to a web site; and

displaying the plurality of annotations to the user while the user is visiting the web site.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

detecting when a user visits the web site and receiving the plurality of annotations in response to the detection.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein detecting when a user visits a web site includes:

monitoring a web browsing session of the user for changes to a web site the user is viewing.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of annotations are blog posts.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

transmitting a search request to the search engine, where the search engine is a blog search engine,

wherein the plurality of blog posts are received in response to the transmitted search request.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the transmitted search request specifies that the blog search engine perform a search for blog posts that link to the web site.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

displaying the plurality of annotations concurrently with the web page by a browser program.

8. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

calculating a rating based at least on one of a number, quality, or timeliness of the blog posts; and

displaying an icon in a web browser that changes based on the rating.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the icon is displayed in a visually more distinctive manner as the rating increases.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying the plurality of annotations includes displaying a sidebar or popup window that includes the plurality of annotations.

11. A computer-readable medium containing programming instructions that comprise:

instructions to detect when a user visits a web site;

instructions to receive, in response to the detection, a plurality of blog posts that link to the web site; and

instructions to display an indication of the plurality of blog posts to the user while the user is visiting the web site.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, further comprising:

instructions to transmit a search request to a blog search engine,

wherein the plurality of blog posts are received in response to the transmitted search request.

13. A method comprising:

detecting when a user visits a web site;

submitting, in response to the detection, a search query to a search engine, the search query requesting documents relevant to the web site;

receiving documents in response to the submitted search query; and

displaying an indication of the documents to the user while the user is visiting the web site.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein detecting when a user visits a web site includes:

monitoring a web browsing session of the user for changes to a web site the user is viewing.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the received documents include blog posts.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the search engine is a blog search engine.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the search query specifies that the blog search engine perform a search for blog posts that link to the web site.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein the displayed indication of the documents is displayed within a browser window that is also displaying the web page.

19. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

calculating a rating based at least on one of a number, quality, or timeliness of the documents received from the search engine; and

displaying an icon in a web browser that changes based on the rating.

20. A device comprising:

means for detecting when a user visits a web site;

means for submitting, in response to the detection, a search query to a search engine, the search query requesting documents relevant to the web site;

means for receiving documents in response to the submitted search query; and

means for displaying an indication of the documents to the user while the user is visiting the web site.

21. A system comprising:

a blog search engine; and

a client device connected to the blog search engine over a network, the client device including a software component configured to display web sites to users and to concurrently determine and display portions of blog posts that link to a currently displayed web site, the blog posts being determined based on a query to the blog search engine for blog posts linking to the currently displayed web site.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the client device additionally monitors a web browsing session of a user for changes to the currently displayed web site.

23. The system of claim 21, wherein the client device additionally transmits a search request to the blog search engine, and wherein the blog posts are received in response to the transmitted search request.

24. The system of claim 21, wherein the client device additionally calculates a rating based at least on one of a number, quality, or timeliness of the blog posts, and the client device displays an icon that changes based on the rating.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein the icon is displayed in a visually more distinctive manner as the rating increases.

26. The system of claim 21, wherein the client device additionally displays a sidebar or popup window within the currently displayed web page, the sidebar or popup window displaying portions of the blog posts.

27. A computer-readable medium that includes instructions for execution by one or more processors, the computer-readable medium including:

instructions for receiving an indication of a web site based on monitoring a web browsing session of a user for changes to the web site the user is viewing;

instructions for submitting a search query to a blog search engine that requests information relating to blog posts that link to the web site;

instructions for receiving blog posts from the search engine in response to the submitted search query;

instructions for displaying an icon to the user that represents the quantity, timeliness, or quality of the received blog posts; and

instructions for displaying one or more of the blog posts to the user while the user is visiting the web site.