Systems and methods of ranking attention

• US 7,769,740 B2
• Filed: 12/21/2007
• Issued: 08/03/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2007
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Davis, Marc Eliot, Higgins, Christopher William, Martinez, Ronald, O'Sullivan, Joseph James
• Primary Examiner(s): Wong; Don
• Assistant Examiner(s): Thai; Hanh B
• Application Number:
  US11/963,374
• Publication Number:
  US 20090164450A1
• Time in Patent Office: 956 Days
• Field of Search: 707/706, 707/709, 707/723
• US Class Current: 707/706
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

The disclosure describes systems and methods of ranking user interest in physical entities based on the attention given to those entities as determined by an analysis of communications from devices over multiple communication channels. The attention ranking systems allow any “Who, What, When, Where” entity to be defined and ranked based, at least in part, on information obtained from communications between users and user proxy devices. An entity rank is generated for entity known to the system in which the entity rank is derived from the information in communications that are indicative of user actions related to the entity. The entity ranks are then used to modify the display of information or data associated with the entities. The system may also generate a personal rank for each entity based on the relation of the entity to a specified user.

Claims

1. A method of presenting results of a web page query comprising:

generating, via a computing device, a results set of web pages matching the web page query, each web page associated with a web rank;

for each web page referring to one of a plurality of predefined entities in the content of the web page, retrieving, via the computing device, an entity rank for the web page, the retrieved entity rank being an entity rank associated with the one predefined entity referred to in the content of the web page;

collecting data indicative of user actions from a plurality of user proxy devices;

identifying, based on the data, a plurality of user actions;

for each user action, identifying a user and at least one of the plurality of predefined entities associated with the user action;

generating an entity rank for each of the plurality of predefined entities based on a number of user actions associated with each predefined entity; and

generating a personal rank for each of the plurality of predefined entities relative to the first user based on a number of user actions associated with the first user and each predefined entity; and

transmitting the results set of web pages based on the web rank and entity rank for each web page and user action to a user computer device for visible display on a display of the user computer device.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

for each web page in the results set, generating the web rank based on similarity between the web page query and the content of the web page;

generating a combined rank for each web page in the results set from the web rank and entity rank for each web page; and

transmitting the results set of web pages based on the combined rank for each web page in the results set to the user computer device for visible display on the display of the user computer device.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

collecting data indicative of user actions from a plurality of user proxy devices; and

generating an entity rank for each of the plurality of predefined entities based on data from the user proxy devices.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

collecting the data from messages transmitted between two user proxy devices;

identifying, based on the data, a plurality of user actions;

for each user action, identifying a user and at least one of the plurality of predefined entities associated with the user action; and

generating the entity rank for each of the plurality of predefined entities based on a number of user actions associated with each predefined entity.

5. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

identifying a first user action, the data corresponding to the first user action including an identification of a first location;

determining that the first location is a first predefined entity; and

associating the first user action with the first predefined entity.

6. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

identifying a second user action, the data corresponding to the second user action including an identification of an event defined by a second location and a time;

determining that the event is a second predefined entity; and

associating the first user action with the second predefined entity.

7. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

identifying a third user action, the data corresponding to the third user action including an identification of a business;

determining that the business is a third predefined entity; and

associating the third user action with the third predefined entity.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

identifying a first user that transmitted the web page query; and

for each web page referring to one of the plurality of predefined entities in the content of the web page, retrieving the personal rank for the web page, the personal rank being a personal rank for the predefined entity referred to in the content of the web page relative to the first user; and

displaying the results set of web pages based on the web rank, personal rank and entity rank for each web page.

9. A computer-readable storage medium tangibly encoding computer-readable instructions, which when executed by a computer, perform a method comprising:

defining a plurality of physical entities;

analyzing communications from entity proxies for references to one or more of the defined plurality of physical entities;

generating a relative entity rank for each physical entity based on the references contained in the communications from the entity proxies;

collecting data indicative of user actions from a plurality of user proxy devices;

identifying, based on the data, a plurality of user actions;

for each user action, identifying a user and at least one of the plurality of predefined entities associated with the user action;

generating an entity rank for each of the plurality of predefined entities based on a number of user actions associated with each predefined entity; and

generating a personal rank for each of the plurality of predefined entities relative to the first user based on a number of user actions associated with the first user and each predefined entity; and

presenting information to a first user about one or more of the plurality of physical entities based on the relative entity rank, personal rank and entity rank of the one or more physical entities.

10. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein defining a plurality of physical entities further comprises:

monitoring communications over at least one electronic communication channel from a plurality of devices;

defining each device as one of the plurality of physical entities;

defining at least one person, place or thing that is not directly capable of transmitting communications over at least one electronic communication channel as one of the plurality of physical entities; and

identifying, for each physical entity that is not a device directly capable of transmitting communications, at least one entity proxy for that physical entity;

wherein defining a plurality of physical entities further comprises;

assigning a unique identifier to each physical entity; and

generating, for each physical entity, a entity definition having one or more parameters and entity proxy identifiers, wherein the parameters are selected from spatial parameters, temporal parameters, social parameters, keywords, and electronic entity identifiers, and the entity proxy identifiers are the unique identifiers for each physical entity that is an entity proxy for the physical entity defined by the entity definition.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein analyzing communications further comprises:

searching the communications for data matching one or more entity definitions.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein generating a relative entity rank further comprises:

calculating the relative entity rank for each physical entity based on;

how many references to each physical entity are contained in the analyzed communications, or

how many communications contain references to each physical entity.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 9, wherein the method further comprises:

defining each identifiable person and each identifiable location referenced in the communications as one of the plurality of physical entities;

generating, for the first user, a personal entity rank for each physical entity based on the references contained in communications associated with the first user; and

presenting information to the first user about one or more of the plurality of physical entities based on the relative entity rank and the personal entity rank of the one or more physical entities.

14. A computing system comprising:

plurality of processors;

a web rank module implemented by at least one of said plurality of processors that collects web data produced by user interactions with web pages from user proxy devices;

the web rank module identifies, based on the user interactions, a plurality of user actions, wherein for each user action, the web rank module identifies a user and at least one of a plurality of predefined real-world entities (RWEs) associated with the user action;

a world rank module implemented by at least one of said plurality of processors that generates an entity rank for each of a set of the predefined real-world entities (RWEs), said entity rank based on a number of user actions associated with each predefined entity;

an attention rank module implemented by at least one of said plurality of processors that generates an attention rank for at least one web page and user interactions based on the web rank of the web page and entity rank of at least one RWE associated with the web page; and

the attention rank module generates a personal rank for each of the RWEs relative to a user based on a number of user actions associated with the user and each RWE.

15. The computing system of claim 14 further comprising:

an entity data collection module connected to the world rank module that collects user data from communications transmitted by the RWEs including identities of users associated with the communications, a number of communications and communication channels associated with the communications; and

wherein the world rank module generates the entity rank by mapping the user data.

16. The computing system of claim 14 further comprising:

a web page association module connected to the attention rank module that, based on the content of a web page, identifies at least one RWE as associated with the web page; and

wherein the attention rank module when generating an attention rank for one more of a set of web pages receives from the web page association module an identification of the at least one RWE, if any, associated with each of the set of web pages.

17. The computing system of claim 14 further comprising:

a web search query engine connected to the attention rank module that retrieves the attention rank for each web page in a web page query result and presents the web page query result based on the attention rank of the web pages.

18. The computing system of claim 14 further comprising:

a personal rank module that generates, for a first RWE, a personal rank for each of the set of predefined RWEs relative to the first RWE; and

wherein the attention rank module, in response to a request associated with the first RWE, generates the attention rank for the at least one web page based on the web rank of the web page, the entity rank of the at least one RWE associated with the web page, and the personal rank of the at least one RWE associated with the web page.

19. The computing system of claim 14, wherein each RWE is one of a user, a user proxy device, a location, a legal entity, or a physical object.