ASSOCIATING DOCUMENTS WITH CLASSIFICATIONS AND RANKING DOCUMENTS BASED ON CLASSIFICATION WEIGHTS

• US 20090187566A1
• Filed: 04/01/2009
• Published: 07/23/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/17/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hongyuan Zha, Sean Suchter
• Inventors: Zha, Hongyuan, Suchter, Sean
• Granted Patent: US 9,047,370 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/355 Class or cluster creation or modification
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A method and apparatus for associating documents with classification values and ranking documents based on classification weights is provided. It is determined if a document is associated a classification. If the document is associated with a classification, then it is determined if a classification value, which is associated with the document, is associated with a weight. If the classification value is associated with a weight, then a rank of the document is adjusted based on the weight that is associated with the classification value.

Claims

1. A method of associating region information with a document, the method comprising the steps of:

determining whether a top-level domain indicated in a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a host is a national regional domain; and

in response to determining that the top-level domain of the host is not a national regional domain;

(a) determining which particular national regions said host is associated with based on factors other than said top-level domain, and

(b) associating the document with at least one of said particular national regions;

wherein the top-level domain is a suffix that follows a last period in a host name of the host in the URL.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining which particular national regions said host is associated with based on factors other than said top-level domain includes the steps of:

determining that a language of the document is associated with one or more national regions; and

in response to determining that the language of the document is associated with one or more national regions, associating the document with at least one national region that is associated with the language of the document.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the language is at least one of:

Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Chinese, English, Flemish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Danish, Finnish, Italian, Swedish, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Oriya, Assamese, Sindhi, and Norwegian.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the top-level domain is at least one of:

“

.fr”

, “

.de”

, “

.aq”

“

com”

, “

.edu”

, “

.net”

, “

.org”

, “

.us”

, and “

.usa”

.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein associating, with a document that is associated with said host, at least one national region that is associated with the top-level domain of the host comprises adding a database entry to a database.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the document with at least one of said particular national regions comprises adding a database entry to a database.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining which particular national regions said host is associated with based on factors other than said top-level domain includes the steps of:

determining a language associated with the document;

determining whether the language belongs to a first set of languages;

in response to determining that the language belongs to the first set of languages, associating, with the document, one or more national regions associated with the language.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining which particular national regions said host is associated with based on factors other than said top-level domain includes the steps of:

determining a language associated with the document;

determining whether the language belongs to a first set of languages;

in response to determining that the language does not belong to the first set of languages, associating with the document one or more national regions based on factors other than said language.

11. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 1.

12. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 2.

13. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 3.

14. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 4.

15. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 5.

16. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 6.

17. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 7.

18. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 8.

9. A method of associating region information with a document, the method comprising the steps of:

determining, based solely on a top-level domain of a host, whether the top-level domain is a national regional domain;

wherein the top-level domain is a suffix that follows a last period in a host name in a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the host; and

in response to determining that the top-level domain of the host is not a national regional domain;

(a) determining which particular national regions said host is associated with based on factors other than said top-level domain, and

(b) associating the document with at least one of said particular national regions.

19. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 9.

10. A method of presenting a ranked list of documents to a user, comprising:

receiving search query terms from the user;

ranking a set of documents based on said search query terms and based on region information associated with a document; and

presenting, to said user, a list of documents that includes a first document whose rank was improved based on region information associated with said first document;

wherein said list includes a second document whose rank was not improved based on region information associated with said second document.

20. One or more storage media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause performance of the method recited in claim 10.