Use of off-page content to enhance captions with additional relevant information

• US 9,009,143 B2
• Filed: 10/03/2011
• Issued: 04/14/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/03/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Thazhathekalam, Krishnan, Simpson, David, Ahn, David D., Burbank, Andrea, Salvetti, Franco, Jewell, Christopher Jon
• Primary Examiner(s): TRUONG, CAM Y T
• Application Number:
  US13/251,297
• Publication Number:
  US 20130086041A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,289 Days
• Field of Search: 707/722
• US Class Current: 707/722
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements

Abstract

Architecture that uses content from off-page data sources such as feeds (e.g., yellow pages, coupons, social networks, commerce, etc.) to present additional, relevant information in association with search results. The additional and relevant information is directly relevant to the implicit task the user is trying to accomplish. The architecture includes online and offline mechanisms that identify an entity represented on a web page and look-up information related to that entity in disparate data sources. Relevance heuristics are employed to determine which of the available entity data to show in the caption given the user query, the web page, and the underlying user task (other known information about the user such as geographic location).

Claims

1. A computer-implemented system, comprising:

a processor coupled to a memory, the processor configured to execute computer-executable instructions associated with at least a data component;

a search engine configured to receive and process a query related to an underlying user task of a user for obtaining a search result comprising links to target webpages;

the data component configured to respond to processing of the query and operates to identify on-page data content elements on the target webpages related to the search result corresponding to the query, the data component obtains additional content element data comprising at least one of concepts or content, determined to be relevant to the content elements, from disparate off-page data from sources other than the target webpages to use in the search result, wherein the data component further comprises;

an offline component configured to collect content element data of an identifier associated with content elements from the off-page data sources, and determine size of the collected content element data of the identifier;

if the size of the collected content element data is below a threshold, all the collected content element data is stored in a network content index, and if the size of the collected content element data is not below the threshold, the collected content element data is injected into the network content index; and

an online component configured to retrieve collected content element data from the off-page data sources and applies a relevance heuristic to determine on-page data and off-page data to use in association with the search result, wherein the online component retrieves the collected content element data at runtime and sends a realtime call to an appropriate data source for additional content element data of a content element;

and

a presentation component configured to present the on-page data content elements and the additional content element data from the off-page data sources in a caption accompanying the links to the target webpages in the search result.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the offline component collects content element data associated with content elements from the off-page data sources and stores the collected content element data in the network content index, which is a search content index.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the offline component groups the content elements based on an identifier of the target webpage.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the data component inserts the content element data into a cached copy of an identifier in the search content index.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the data component employs a relevance heuristic to determine content element data to show in the search result based on the query, a target webpage, and underlying user task.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the off-page data sources are external feeds.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the presentation component comprises an engine configured to assemble the search result that presents the relevant content of the on-page data source and the off-page data sources in the search result.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein copies of resource identifiers and associated content element data are cached for retrieval.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein off-page content element data is extracted from off-page data sources based on a content element key.

10. A computer-implemented method, comprising steps of:

processing a search query related to an underlying user task of a user, to obtain a search result comprising links to target web pages;

identifying on-page content elements in corresponding target webpages based on the search query;

retrieving off-page entity data to use in the search result, from off-page data sources different from the target webpages, the off-page entity data comprising at least one of concepts or content determined to be related to the on-page content elements;

collecting, by an offline component, content element data of an identifier associated with content elements from the off-page data sources;

determining size of the collected content element data of the identifier, and if the size of the collected content element data is below a threshold, storing all the collected content element data in a web content index, and if the size of the collected content element data is not below the threshold, injecting the collected content element data into the web content index;

retrieving, by an online component, the collected content element data from the off-page data sources, wherein the online component retrieves the collected content element data at runtime and sends a realtime call to an appropriate data source for additional content element data of a content element;

applying an importance heuristic to the off-page content element data and on-page content element data to determine importance criteria of the off-page content element data and on-page content element data to present; and

presenting the on-page data content element data and the additional content element data from the off-page data sources in a caption accompanying the links to the target web pages in the search result of the query.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising retrieving the content element data for presentation in the search result with on-page content element data.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising applying a relevance heuristic to the content element data to determine a portion of the content element data to present.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising applying an importance heuristic to the entity data to determine importance criteria of each of the content element data.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising storing the content element data in a content index in association with a webpage source identifier.

15. The method of claim 10, further comprising retrieving the off-page content element data based on geographical location of the user.

16. A computer-implemented method, comprising steps of:

processing a query related to an underlying user task of a user, to obtain a search result comprising links to target webpages;

identifying a content element represented in each corresponding target webpage of the target webpages related to the search result based on the query;

retrieving off-page content element data related to the content element and on-page content element data related to the content element, the off-page data being retrieved from off-page data sources different from the target webpages;

collecting, by an offline component, content element data of an identifier associated with content elements from the off-page data sources;

determining size of the collected content element data of the identifier, and if the size of the collected content element data is below a threshold, storing all the collected content element data in a network content index, and if the size of the collected content element data is not below the threshold, injecting the collected content element data into the network content index;

retrieving, by an online component, the collected content element data from the off-page data sources, wherein the online component retrieves the collected content element data at runtime and sends a realtime call to an appropriate data source for additional content element data of a content element;

applying heuristics to the off-page content element data and on-page content element data to determine content element data to present; and

presenting the on-page data content element data and the additional content element data from the off-page data sources in a caption accompanying the links to the target webpages in the search result.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising indexing the on-page content element data and off-page content element data in a content index according to resource identifier of the target webpage.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising grouping the off-page content element data and on-page content element data based on resource identifier of the target webpage.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising caching copies of resource identifiers and associated content element data for retrieval.

20. The method of claim 16, further comprising extracting off-page content element data from off-page data sources based on a content element key.