Patent Application
20110071898
The invention relates generally to computer systems, and more particularly to an improved system and method for updating search advertisements during search results navigation.
Sponsored advertising is a widely used mechanism for selling advertisements using Internet search engines. Each time a user enters a search term into a search engine, advertising space may be allocated within that user's search results. For example, a sponsored search advertising area may be used for displaying sponsored advertisements on a search results web page. There are various methods for selling sponsored advertising in online search advertising including keyword auctions where keywords of a user's query may be auctioned to an advertiser who is the highest bidder with sufficient budget. Search engines' revenues from sponsored advertising are currently on the order of ten billion dollars per year.
When a user enters a search term into a search engine, the sponsored advertisements selected for display to the user are based on the initial search terms in the query submitted. Although a user has a search intention when conducting a search, it is often difficult to derive the user's search intention initially because of the limitations of current natural language processing. For example, when a user searches for the query, “chef's knife”, it is unclear whether the user is interested in purchasing a chef's knife or whether the user might be really looking for a local sharpening service for a particular brand of chef knives. The user's search intention cannot be directly inferred from the initial search keywords, so sponsored advertisements displayed with the initial search results may not be very relevant. Furthermore, a user could change the search intention during a search session. Unfortunately, this can make it difficult to directly infer the user's search intention.
What is needed is a way to provide advertisements that are more relevant to users' interest. Such a system and method should be able to discover the users' intent of the search query to provide more relevant advertisements.
Briefly, the present invention may provide a system and method for updating search advertisements during search results navigation. In various embodiments, a client computer may be operably connected to a search server and an advertisement server. The client computer may include a sponsored advertisement update component operably coupled to a search result click event monitor that receives an address of a web page selectable from the search results web page. The sponsored advertisement update component may send a request that includes an address of a web page selected from a search results web page to update sponsored advertisements displayed in a sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. In response to receiving a search query, a search server operably coupled to the client may add to a search results web page executable instructions for the search result click event monitor to receive an address of a web page selectable from the search results web page in order to send the click event to the advertisement server to update sponsored advertisements displayed in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. The search server may also send a request with query features and user features to the advertisement server to serve a list of sponsored advertisements for display with the search results of query processing.
The advertisement server may be operably coupled to an advertisement serving engine that may include a sponsored advertisement selection engine that selects an update of sponsored advertisements using web page features of a web page selected from the search results web page in addition to using query features and user features. The advertisement serving engine may also include a sponsored advertisement scoring engine that scores candidates for the update of sponsored advertisements using query features, user features and web page features. The advertising serving engine may rank candidates for the update of sponsored advertisements in descending order by score and send a list of sponsored advertisement with the highest scores to the client computer for display in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. Upon receiving the update of sponsored advertisements, the client computer may display the updated sponsored advertisements in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page.
In general, the present invention may effectively provide the capability for a user to receive updated sponsored advertisements displayed on a search results web page during navigation of search results from a search query. To do so, a web browser executing on a client computer may receive a search query input by a user and may send the search query request to a search server. In response, the search server may return search results with executable instructions that monitor events selecting an address of a web page in the search results web page to the web browser executing on the client. An address of a web page may be selected in the search results web page on the client, and a request that includes an address of a web page selected from a search results web page may be sent from the client computer to an advertiser server to update sponsored advertisements displayed in a sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page.
In response, the advertisement server may selects an update of sponsored advertisements using query features, user features and web page features of the web page selected from the search results web page. Candidate advertisements for the update of sponsored advertisements may be scored using query features, user features and web page features, and the candidate advertisements may be ranked in descending order by score. A list of sponsored advertisement with the highest scores may be send as an update to the client computer for display in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. Upon receiving the update of sponsored advertisements, the client computer may display the updated sponsored advertisements in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page.
Advantageously, the present invention may effectively refine a user's search intention by tracking the user's interaction with search results and may deliver more personalized search advertisements to a user during navigation of search results. After receiving search results, more relevant advertisements may be selected by refining query features using web page features identified from navigation of search results. Updated search advertisements may be generated and displayed for a user to view. Other advantages will become apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the drawings, in which:
The invention may be described in the general context of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules, being executed by a computer. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, and so forth, which perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. The invention may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in local and/or remote computer storage media including memory storage devices.
With reference to
The computer system 100 may include a variety of computer-readable media. Computer-readable media can be any available media that can be accessed by the computer system 100 and includes both volatile and nonvolatile media. For example, computer-readable media may include volatile and nonvolatile computer storage media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data. Computer storage media includes, but is not limited to, RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to store the desired information and which can accessed by the computer system 100. Communication media may include computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data in a modulated data signal such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” means a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. For instance, communication media includes wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, RF, infrared and other wireless media.
The system memory 104 includes computer storage media in the form of volatile and/or nonvolatile memory such as read only memory (ROM) 106 and random access memory (RAM) 110. A basic input/output system 108 (BIOS), containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within computer system 100, such as during start-up, is typically stored in ROM 106. Additionally, RAM 110 may contain operating system 112, application programs 114, other executable code 116 and program data 118. RAM 110 typically contains data and/or program modules that are immediately accessible to and/or presently being operated on by CPU 102.
The computer system 100 may also include other removable/non-removable, volatile/nonvolatile computer storage media. By way of example only,
The drives and their associated computer storage media, discussed above and illustrated in
The computer system 100 may operate in a networked environment using a network 136 to one or more remote computers, such as a remote computer 146. The remote computer 146 may be a personal computer, a server, a router, a network PC, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described above relative to the computer system 100. The network 136 depicted in
The present invention is generally directed towards a system and method for updating search advertisements during search results navigation. In general, the present invention may provide the capability for a user to receive updated sponsored advertisements displayed on a search results web page during navigation of search results from a search query. When a web browser executing on a client computer may send a search query input by a user to a search server, the search server may return search results with executable instructions that monitor events selecting an address of a web page in the search results web page to the web browser executing on the client. A user may select a web page in search results, and the client computer may send a request to an advertiser server to update sponsored advertisements displayed in a sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. In response, the advertisement server may selects an update of sponsored advertisements using query features, user features and web page features of the web page selected from the search results web page. The advertisement server may then send the update of sponsored advertisements to the client computer to display the updated sponsored advertisements in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page.
As will be seen, sponsored advertisements displayed in the sponsored advertisement area of a search results web page may be updated using features of selected web pages from search results that may signify the search intention of a user. As used herein, a sponsored advertisement means an advertisement that is promoted typically by financial consideration and includes auctioned advertisements display on a search results web page. As will be understood, the various block diagrams, flow charts and scenarios described herein are only examples, and there are many other scenarios to which the present invention will apply.
Turning to
In various embodiments, a client computer 202 may be operably coupled to a search server 212 and an advertisement server 226 by a network 210. The client computer 202 may be a computer such as computer system 100 of
The search server 212 may be any type of computer system or computing device such as computer system 100 of
The advertisement server 226 may be any type of computer system or computing device such as computer system 100 of
When a user may select a URL displayed in a search results page to request content of a web page, the present invention may send a click event with the URL of the web page selected to an advertisement server that may use features of the web page along with query features and user features to update a list of sponsored advertisements displayed on the search results page. For example,
The advertisement server may then select an updated list of sponsored advertisements at step 410 using query features, user features, and web page features of the web page requested from search results. In an embodiment, the query features may include the terms used in the search query, and the user features may include geographic attributes such as zip code, demographic attributes such as age and gender, and behavioral attributes associated with the user. The web page features may include unigrams and phrases of content of the web page, categories of the web page, geographic attributes of the web page, and so forth. At step 412, an updated list of sponsored advertisements may then be sent from the advertisement server to the client device for display in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. And the updated list of sponsored advertisements may then be displayed in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results page at step 414.
A user may select a URL displayed on a search results page to request content of a web page, and as a result, a click event with the URL of a web page requested from search results may be received at step 508 by the client device. In an embodiment, a click event monitor 208 with the executable instructions for monitoring click events by a user to select search results may receive the click event. At step 510, the click event with the URL of a web page requested from search results may be sent by the client device to an advertisement server which may send an updated list of sponsored advertisements for display in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results page. An updated list of sponsored advertisements from the advertisement server may then be received at step 512 by the client device. And the client device may display the updated list of sponsored advertisements in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page at step 514. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that while the advertisement server may select an updated list of sponsored advertisements, the web browser executing on the client device may send a request to fetch the web page, and, when the web page is received, the web browser may open a new window on the client device in an embodiment to display the content of the web page requested from search results.
The advertisement server may then select a candidate list of sponsored advertisements at step 706 using query features, user features, and web page features of the web page requested from search results. In an embodiment, a sponsored advertisement selection engine may fetch the posting listing for these query features from an advertisement index. And the advertisement server may score the candidate list of sponsored advertisements at step 708 using query features, user features, and web page features of the web page requested from search results. In an embodiment, a sponsored advertisement scoring engine may score the candidate list of sponsored advertisements based on the vector distance between features. For instance, a user, a web page and advertisements may be each represented by several vectors in different spaces. Each vector space may represent a type of feature, such as unigrams, phrases, categories, and so forth. Each dimension of the vector may capture the intensity of that feature. For instance, a web page may have a vector of unigrams, and each dimension of that vector is a frequency value associated with a word. Thus, for each advertisement in the database, the scorer may calculate the distance of the advertisement's vectors from the vectors of the user and web page for each vector space such as unigrams, phrases, and so forth. Then the scorer will calculate a final score, which represents a linear combination of the individual distances between vector spaces of the advertisement and the user and web page. In an embodiment, the distance may be calculated by cosine similarity.
At step 710, the candidate list of sponsored advertisements may be ranked by score. And sponsored advertisement from the ranked list may be assigned web page placements in the sponsored advertisements area of the search results page at step 712. In an embodiment, the highest scoring sponsored advertisements from the ranked list of sponsored advertisements are assigned to the available web page placements in order by highest score. And the list of sponsored advertisements assigned web page placements for display in the sponsored advertisements area of the search results page may be sent to a client device at step 714.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that other scoring techniques may be used. For instance, a scorer can take into consideration the probability of a user click on an advertisement. In this case, the score may represent the probability of a user click on an advertisement if it is served for display in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results page. For such a scorer, the probability database may be initialized during a training phase, and advertisement impressions and user clicks from the traffic event streams may be provided to the scorer for updating the probability database. In various embodiments, vector distance based scoring and probability based scoring may be used together.
Thus the present invention may effectively refine a user's search intention by tracking the user's interaction with search results and may deliver more personalized search advertisements to a user during navigation of search results. After receiving search results, more relevant advertisements may be selected by refining query features using web page features identified from navigation of search results. While the advertisement server may select an updated list of sponsored advertisements, the web browser executing on the client device may send a request to fetch the web page, and, when the web page is received, the web browser may open a new window on the client device in an embodiment to display the content of the web page requested from search results. And updated search advertisements may be sent to a client device and displayed for a user to view in the sponsored advertisements area of the search results page.
As can be seen from the foregoing detailed description, the present invention provides an improved system and method for updating search advertisements during search results navigation. A search server may return search results from a search query with executable instructions that monitor events selecting a web page in the search results. When a web page may be selected in the search results on the client, a request that includes an address of a web page selected from the search results may be sent from the client to an advertiser server to update sponsored advertisements displayed in a sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. The advertisement server may select an update of sponsored advertisements using query features, user features and web page features of the web page selected from the search results web page. The update may be sent to the client for display in the sponsored advertisement area of the search results web page. As a result, the system and method provide significant advantages and benefits needed in contemporary computing and in search advertising applications.
While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative constructions, certain illustrated embodiments thereof are shown in the drawings and have been described above in detail. It should be understood, however, that there is no intention to limit the invention to the specific forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, alternative constructions, and equivalents falling within the spirit and scope of the invention.
