Search Patent Update
New Search Patents and Published Patent Applications for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Become.com
Wow, a very busy week or so. Here’s a selected list of new patents and patent applications.

Awarded Patent: Google
+ Voice interface for a search engine
Filed: February 7, 2001
Awarded: April 11, 2006
U.S. Patent: 7,027,987
“A system provides search results from a voice search query. The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user.” Sergey Brin and Monika Henzinger are listed as co-inventors.

NOTE: Google Labs once offered a voice activated search tool. You can see the page here but the service itself has been offline for a couple of years. Will it be back soon? Of course, there are a number of voice-activated info tools (non-search specific) like Tellme. Also worth noting that both AOL (AOL Voicemail) and Yahoo (Yahoo by Phone) offer services that will allow the user to hear their email, get sports scores, etc.

+ Awarded Patent: Google
Adaptive computation of ranking
Filed: August 23, 2004
Awarded: April 11, 2006
U.S. Patent: 7,028,029

+ Awarded Patent: Yahoo
Associating documents with classifications and ranking documents based on classification weights
Filed: September 30, 2002
Awarded: April 11, 2006
U.S. Patent: 7,028,027
“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.”

+ Patent Application: Microsoft
Classification of information and use of classifications in searching and retrieval of information
Filed: October 4, 2004
“A method and apparatus are provided for classification of information and using the classification information in search and retrieval of information. In one embodiment, musical compositions having various highly subjective characteristics and features are classified according to a schema of objective attributes that are associated with the characteristics and features. Categorizers carry out the classification and create and store attribute information in a database. A search and retrieval system can receive information that characterizes the features of a desired composition and can locate a matching composition. As a result, information having subjective characteristics, such as musical compositions, may be compared and similar musical compositions can be located.”

+ Patent Application: Microsoft
System and method for ranking search results using click distance
Filed: September 30, 2004
“Search results of a search query on a network are ranked according to an additional click distance property associated with each of the documents on the network. The click distance is measurement of the number clicks or user navigations from a page or pages on the network designated as highest authority or root pages on the network. The precision of the results is increased by the addition of the click distance term when the site or intranet where the search query takes place is hierarchically structured.”

+ Patent Application: Microsoft
System and method for incorporating anchor text into ranking search results
Filed: September 30, 2004

+ Patent Application: Become.com
Systems and methods of retrieving topic specific information
Filed: September 16, 2005
“The present invention provides systems and methods of searching web pages relevant to a specific topic based on quality of individual pages. The rank of a page for a keyword may be a combination of analytic rank and editorial rank. The analytic rank of a page may be calculated by combining intrinsic and extrinsic ranks. Intrinsic rank is a measure of relevancy of a page to a given keyword as claimed by an author of the page, while extrinsic rank is a measure of the relevancy of a page on a given keyword as indicated by other pages.”

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