Implicit name searching

• US 20080228720A1
• Filed: 03/14/2007
• Published: 09/18/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/14/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: MUKHERJEE, Rajat, PRESSWALA, Irfan, RAVINARAYANAN, Kalpana
• Granted Patent: US 7,917,489 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3338 Query expansion

Abstract

Techniques and tools described herein provide mechanisms for displaying information that is contextually related to a search query. Using these techniques and tools, a user can lookup and discover a person or other entity from contextually related information. For example, if the user submits a search query on the title of a song (e.g., “Janie'"'"'s got a gun”), then, in addition to a variety of documents related to the title of the song, the user may be presented with information about a related entity such as “Aerosmith” (e.g., the band that sings the song). In this way, the techniques and tools provide mechanisms that identify information that is not directly related to the search query, but that is information the user may find useful or interesting based on context of the search query.

Claims

1. A method for displaying information to a user comprising:

receiving a search query at a search engine, wherein said search query includes a set of search terms;

generating, by the search engine, a set of search results based on the search terms in the search query;

extracting a set of keywords from at least a portion of the set of search results;

heuristically identifying at least one of said keywords from the set of keywords as a name entity, wherein said name entity is not a term in said set of search terms;

determining name entity information to be presented to a user, wherein said name entity information is associated with said name entity; and

presenting said name entity information to a user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said name entity is at least one of a person, a place, and an object.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said name entity corresponds to an index entry in a profile information database.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein said name entity information includes profile information derived from the profile information database.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein determining name entity information to be presented to a user comprises:

submitting said name entity to the search engine as a new search query; and

generating, by the search engine, a new set of search results associated with the name entity.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the new set of search results generated by the search engine includes information retrieved from a feed-based data repository.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein extracting a set of keywords from at least a portion of the set of search results includes extracting the set of keywords from the top search results in said set of search results.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein heuristically identifying at least one of said keywords from the set of keywords includes determining if the at least one of said keywords is in a high percentage of said top search results.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said high percentage is eighty percent.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein heuristically identifying at least one of said keywords from the set of keywords as a name entity includes:

identifying two or more candidate name entities; and

selecting the name entity from said two or more candidate name entities based on a set of threshold metrics.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein presenting said name entity information to a user includes displaying said name entity information in a same search results page as the set of search results.