Search result ranking based on trust

• US 7,603,350 B1
• Filed: 05/09/2006
• Issued: 10/13/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Guha, Ramanathan
• Primary Examiner(s): Ali; Mohammad
• Assistant Examiner(s): Shmatov; Alexey
• Application Number:
  US11/382,449
• Time in Patent Office: 1,253 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A search engine system provides search results that are ranked according to a measure of the trust associated with entities that have provided labels for the documents in the search results. A search engine receives a query and selects documents relevant to the query. The search engine also determines labels associated with selected documents, and the trust ranks of the entities that provided the labels. The trust ranks are used to determine trust factors for the respective documents. The trust factors are used to adjust information retrieval scores of the documents. The search results are then ranked based on the adjusted information retrieval scores.

Claims

1. A method performed by a data processing apparatus, the method comprising:

receiving a search query, the search query comprising a query term and a query label term, the query label term being a categorical identifier;

identifying one or more resources in a search result set responsive to the search query, wherein each of the one or more resources has an associated matching label term that matches the query label term and an associated non-matching label term that does not match the query label term, each associated label term being the categorical identifier describing each resource and having been associated with the resource by a respective entity;

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a trust rank of the entity that associated the associated matching label term with the resource, wherein the trust rank indicates whether a user trusts the associated matching label term of the resource, and

increasing a relevance score of each resource that has the associated matching label term based on the respective trust rank, the relevance score indicating a degree of relevance between the respective resource and the query term;

ranking each of the one or more resources in the search result set based on the respective relevance scores;

annotating, with a name of the respective entity that associated the matching label term with each resource, indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set; and

providing the indicia in a response to the search query.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein annotating, with the name of the respective entity further comprises:

annotating, with the matching label term associated with each resource, the indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a second trust rank of a second entity that associated a second matching label term with the resource; and

aggregating the trust rank and the second trust rank to determine a trust factor.

4. A method executed by one or more processors causing the one or more processors to execute the steps of:

receiving a search query, the search query comprising a query term and a query label term, the query label term being a categorical identifier;

identifying one or more resources in a search result set responsive to the search query, wherein each of the one or more resources has two or more associated matching label terms that match the query label term and that each label term being the categorical identifier describing each resource and been associated with the resource by a different respective entity;

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a trust rank of each entity that associated a matching label term with the resource, wherein the trust rank indicates whether a user trusts the associated matching label term of the resource, and

increasing a relevance score of each resource that has the two or more associated matching label terms based on the respective trust factors, the relevance score indicating a degree of relevance between the respective resource and the query term;

ranking each of the one or more resources in the search result set based on the respective relevance scores;

annotating, with a name of each entity that associated the matching label terms with each resource, indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set; and

providing the indicia in a response to the search query.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a second trust rank of a second entity that associated a second matching label term with the resource; and

aggregating the trust rank and the second trust rank to determine a trust factor.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein annotating, with the name of each entity further comprises:

annotating, with the two matching label terms associated with each resource, the indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set.

7. A system comprising:

one or more computers;

a computer-readable medium coupled to the one or more computers having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more computers, cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising;

receiving a search query, the search query comprising a query term and a query label term, the query label term being a categorical identifier;

identifying one or more resources in a search result set responsive to the search query, wherein each of the one or more resources has an associated matching label term that matches the query label term and an associated non-matching label term that does not match the query label term, each associated label term being the categorical identifier describing each resource and having been associated with the resource by a respective entity;

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a trust rank of the entity that associated the associated matching label term with the resource, wherein the trust rank indicates whether a user trusts the associated matching label term of the resource, and

increasing a relevance score of each resource that has the associated matching label term based on the respective trust rank, the relevance score indicating a degree of relevance between the respective resource and the query term;

ranking each of the one or more resources in the search result set based on the respective relevance scores;

annotating, with a name of the respective entity that associated the matching label term with each resource, indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set; and

providing the indicia in a response to the search query.

8. The system of claim 7, where in the operations further comprise:

annotating, with the matching label term associated with each resource, the indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the operations further comprise:

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a second trust rank of a second entity that associated a second matching label term with the resource; and

aggregating the trust rank and the second trust rank to determine a trust factor.

10. A system comprising:

one or more computers;

a computer-readable medium coupled to the one or more computers having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more computers, cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising;

receiving a search query, the search query comprising a query term and a query label term, the query label term being a categorical identifier;

identifying one or more resources in a search result set responsive to the search query, wherein each of the one or more resources has two or more associated matching label terms that match the query label term and that each label term being the categorical identifier describing each resource and been associated with the resource by a different respective entity;

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a trust rank of each entity that associated a matching label term with the resource based on the trust information; and

increasing a relevance score of each resource that has the two or more associated matching label terms based on the respective trust ranks, the relevance score indicating a degree of relevance between the respective resource and the query term;

ranking each of the one or more resources in the search result set based on the respective relevance scores;

annotating, with a name of each entity that associated the matching label term with each resource, indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set; and

providing the indicia in a response to the search query.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising:

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a second trust rank of a second entity that associated a second matching label term with the resource; and

aggregating the trust rank and the second trust rank to determine a trust factor.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise:

annotating, with the two matching label terms associated with each resource, the indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set.

13. A computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

receiving a search query, the search query comprising a query term and a query label term, the query label term being a categorical identifier;

identifying one or more resources in a search result set responsive to the search query, wherein each of the one or more resources has an associated matching label term that matches the query label term and an associated non-matching label term that does not match the query label term, each associated label term being the categorical identifier describing each resource and having been associated with the resource by a respective entity;

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a trust rank of the entity that associated the associated matching label term with the resource based on the trust information, wherein the trust rank indicates whether a user trusts the associated matching label term of the resource, and

increasing a relevance score of each resource that has the associated matching label term based on the respective trust rank, the relevance score indicating a degree of relevance between the respective resource and the query term;

ranking each of the one or more resources in the search result set based on the respective relevance scores;

annotating, with a name of the respective entity that associated the matching label term with each resource, indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set; and

providing the indicia in a response to the search query.

14. A computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

receiving a search query, the search query comprising a query term and a query label term, the query label term being a categorical identifier;

identifying one or more resources in a search result set responsive to the search query, wherein each of the one or more resources has two or more associated matching label terms that match the query label term and that each label term being the categorical identifier describing each resource and been associated with the resource by a different respective entity;

determining, for each of the one or more resources;

a trust rank of each entity that associated a matching label term with the resource, wherein the trust rank indicates whether a user trusts the associated matching label term of the resource, and

increasing a relevance score of each resource that has the two or more associated matching label terms based on the respective trust ranks, the relevance score indicating a degree of relevance between the respective resource and the query term;

ranking each of the one or more resources in the search result set based on the respective relevance scores;

annotating, with a name of each entity that associated the matching label term with each resource, indicia identifying each resource of the ranked search result set; and

providing the indicia in a response to the search query.