1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to displaying search results to users, and more particularly relates to methods and systems for overlaying third-party information on displayed search results.
2. Description of the Related Art
A search engine is a search application capable of receiving a search term (e.g., “restaurant,” “beauty supplies,” etc.) from a network user and providing the user, in response thereto, with a search result list containing information (or hyperlinks to information) theoretically relevant to the search term. Traditional search applications locate relevant information by using an automated crawling application (e.g., a “web crawler”) to index information available to users of the Internet, and a relevancy algorithm to determine which indexed information is relevant. The information available to users of the Internet includes, but not limited to, web pages, news groups, databases, open directories, images, videos, audios, and other types of files.
The search engine may return a summary of the identified content in the form of a set of search results to the client system. The search results might include titles, abstracts, and/or links for the identified pieces of content. The search query and search results may be routed between the client system and the search engine over one or more networks, and by one or more servers coupled to the network. In many cases, the search results comprise many more hits (or results) than the querier can contemplate; therefore, only the first few hits (or results) displayed might be examined.
As mentioned above, the search results might include titles, abstracts, and/or links for the identified pieces of content. A user clicks a particular search result to view detailed contents of the search results based on several factors, including confidence in relevancy of the search results based on previous search experience with the search engine, the description of the hyperlinks matching the user's interests, and the relevancy of the brief abstract typically appearing below the hyperlink of each search result. Providing displayed search results with information to help users decide whether the search results are relevant and/or are worth taking further action, such as clicking on the links, helps users get to the needed information with the least amount of effort in trial and error.
It is in this context that embodiments of the present invention arise.
Broadly speaking, the embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for integrating third-party information, such as third-party rating information, over the search results. The integrated third-party information in search results provides users additional information to determine which search results to click on for more details. In one embodiment, the methods and systems allow users to choose which third-party data sources to include (or overlay) in their search results. Whenever a user issues a search request to a search engine, which returns search results that correspond to relevant third-party overlay data, the search engine will return a list of the search results integrated with the corresponded third-party data. The integrated third-party information augments the titles, abstracts and link descriptions of search results to help the user determine which search results in the list are relevant. The information, such as rating and review information, provided by third parties trusted by the user can also help the user judge the quality of products and services described in the search results.
It should be appreciated that the present invention can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a method, a system, or a device. Several inventive embodiments of the present invention are described below.
In one embodiment, a method of returning search results overlayed with third-party rating information by a search engine is provided. The method includes configuring the search engine to include rating information provided by a plurality of third parties to be integrated with the search results. The method also includes receiving a search request from a user. The method further includes returning search results related to the search request. The search results are overlayed with rating information relevant to the search results and the rating information being provided by the plurality of third parties. The rating information being overlayed provides the user additional information about the search results to help the user determine the relevancy of the search results.
In another embodiment, an information retrieval system for searching information stored on a plurality of information server systems connected to the Internet and to return search results with integrated rating information is provided. The information retrieval system includes the plurality of information server systems storing information to be retrieved by users, wherein the information servers are connected to the Internet. The information retrieval system also includes a search system. The search system is connected to the Internet and indexes contents on the plurality of information server systems. The search system receives a search request from a user and returns the search results related to the search request to the user. The information retrieval system further includes a plurality of third-party rating server systems connected to the Internet. The plurality of third-party rating server systems provide rating information on some of the information stored on the plurality of information server systems. The rating information is provided to the search system and the rating information being integrated in the search results presented to the user to provide the user additional information about the search results.
In yet another embodiment, computer readable media including program instructions for returning search results overlayed with third-party rating information by a search engine is provided. The computer readable media include program instructions for configuring the search engine to include rating information provided by a plurality of third parties to be integrated with the search results. The computer readable media also include program instructions for receiving a search request from a user. The computer readable media further include program instructions for returning search results related to the search request. The search results are overlayed with rating information relevant to the search results and the rating information being provided by the plurality of third parties. The rating information being overlayed provides the user additional information about the search results to help the user determine the relevancy of the search results.
Other aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, illustrating by way of example the principles of the invention.
The present invention will be readily understood by the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, and like reference numerals designate like structural elements.
Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example, not limitation. It is to be understood that the invention is of broad utility and may be used in many different contexts.
Broadly speaking, the embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for integrating third-party information, such as third-party rating information, over the search results. The integrated third-party information in search results provides users additional information to determine which search results to click on for more details. In one embodiment, the methods and systems allow users to choose which third-party data sources to include (or overlay) in their search results. Whenever a user issues a search request to a search engine, which returns search results that correspond to relevant third-party overlay data, the search engine will return a list of the search results integrated with the corresponded third-party data. The integrated third-party information augments the titles, abstracts and link descriptions of search results to help the user determine which search results in the list are relevant. The information, such as rating and review information, provided by third parties trusted by the user can also help the user judge the quality of products and services described in the search results.
Several elements in the system shown in
Below the link with title 211, there is an abstract 212 of the result web page 220, which would appear when the user click on the link with title 211, as shown in
As mentioned above, a list of search results, such as 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, and 206, appears in the search result page 200. The user, who enters the search term earlier, looks at the list of search results and decides which search result to click to get more detailed information. The user might have conducted the search to find a restaurant reserving “fusion food” in San Francisco to dine during the upcoming weekend. On a first glance of the search results, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, and 206, search result 201 does not appear to be related to fusion food. It's selected because “Hotel Fusion” has a word “Fusion” and the hotel is in San Francisco. The user can find that the other 5 search results, 202, 203, 204, 205, and 206, all appear to be relevant to the “fusion food” that the user is looking for in San Francisco. The user can choose one of the search results to click for more details based on the user's prior knowledge of the restaurants, the web sites, such as “Citysearch”, that provide reviews of restaurants. If the user does not have prior knowledge of the listed restaurants or the restaurant review sites, the user will likely randomly click on one of the search results to view details until at least one restaurant serving fusion food in San Francisco appeals to the user. This is particular true for users new to San Francisco, not familiar with a restaurant in San Francisco, or a visitor to San Francisco.
For users who do not have sufficient knowledge of the subjects being searched, such as restaurants serving fusion food in San Francisco, it would be beneficial to have additional information provided by third parties trusted by the users, or by third parties known by the users. For example, ZAGAT™ survey is well known for providing ratings and reviews for restaurants. ZAGAT survey rates restaurants in major cities in the United States and around the world. Many users trust the ZAGAT survey rating and like to dine in restaurants with good ZAGAT survey ratings. When a user with such a background makes the search query mentioned in
Currently Internet users utilize search engines to search for many types of information. Users cannot be familiar with all subjects and all geographical areas. When users are presented with search results in areas and/or subjects not familiar to them, information provided by third parties trusted by the users would help users make decisions on which search results to view first and if the content of a particular search result with third-party rating (or evaluation) is trust-worthy or not. Third-party rating and/or evaluation can improve users' search experience. The ZAGAT survey is only one of the many examples of rating of services. Rating and evaluation have been provided by numerous sources to numerous products, services, and web sites. For example, Yahoo!®Movies provide information on movie ratings. A movie can get an “A”, “B”, “C”, “D”, “E” or “F” rating by the critics and by Yahoo! Users. Many other web sites or organizations also provide movie ratings, such as Rotten Tomatoes and The Classification and Rating Administration (CARA). Different users might trust different rating service providers more than others. Another example of rating is the rating of books, CD, and other products by Amazon users. Amazon™ compiles the user inputs and shows the ratings to other Amazon users. Advertisers for books or CDs sometimes quote the ratings of Amazon to promote books or CDs. Users who trust Amazon's ratings and reviews would find the search results more relevant and trust-worthy if Amazon ratings appear with the search results, when the users are searching for products that are rated and reviewed by Amazon. Yet another example of trusted third party rating is the rating by American Auto Association (AAA), which rates hotels, motels and other services. Many users rely on AAA rating to choose hotels and restaurants while traveling. Supplementing information of third party rating and/or review of trusted third parties by users in the search results would enhance the users' search experience.
Providing third-party rating (or evaluation) information in the search results helps users make decisions in which search results to view first and gives users better search experience. When users have better search experience with the search engine that provides such third-party rating information, users will like to use the search engine more and have more trust in the search engine. More users can be drawn to use search engine due to the better searching experience. As for the third parties that provide rating (or evaluation) information to the search engine (or system), providing rating information to be integrated with the search results can gain more recognition for the third parties. For example, when the user of
Additionally, rating information servers 2801 to 280M for providing third-party ratings are configured to send rating related information to search server 50 for search server 50 to integrate the rating related information from these third parties in the search results returned (or presented) to users. In one embodiment, the third party ratings are sent to a rating server 51, which can be part of search server 50 or can be separated from the search server 50. The rating server can have databases to store rating related information provided by the third parties. However, the rating server 51 is coupled to the search server 50 to allow data exchange between the search server 50 and the rating server 51. In one embodiment, the rating related information from third-party servers, 2801 to 280M, is sent to the rating server 51 through Internet. In another embodiment, the rating related information from third-party rating information servers, 2801 to 280M, is sent to the rating server 51 through designated communication lines, such as line 245. Third parties that provide rating information can also be associated with company that owns the search engine. For example, Yahoo! collects and provides rating information to various products and services, such as Yahoo! Movie rating. Yahoo! can provide third-party rating information to Yahoo!'s search engine. Since the movies being rated are not produced by Yahoo!, the rating is considered done by a third party.
The search server 50 along with the rating server 51 collect the rating related information from third-parties and manage the integration of the rating information with the search results. If there are more than one third parties that provide rating information to a product or service, which is called a collision of data, the search server (or search engine) 50 needs to have a way to manage the collision of data. In one embodiment, the search engine can give different weights to different rating information providers that are in the same categories. The rating information provided by the third party that has higher weight will be integrated in the search result, instead of the one with lower weight. For example, both ZAGAT survey and another rating provider Third Party X rate a particular restaurant Y. The search engine gives ZAGAT survey a higher weight. When a user's search results include restaurant Y, the rating information offered by ZAGAT survey is shown, instead of Third Party Z. Alternatively, the search engine can be configured to include rating information by more than one third party. Under such situation, rating information from both ZAGAT survey and Third Party X is included. However, each search result should only integrate (or overlay) rating information from limited number of third parties. If not, users can be confused or overwhelmed by search results with a number of ratings from different sources.
Integrating rating information in the search results takes computing resources from the search engine (or server) and can slow down the time it takes to return search results to the users. In one embodiment, only the first few pages of search results are integrated with the third-party rating information. In one embodiment, equal to or less than 1000 top results are integrated with the rating information. This means that the top 1000 results are checked with the database in the rating server to see if there is rating information available to be included with these 1000 top results. This does not mean all top 1000 results would be integrated with rating information. Only the top 1000 results with rating information available would be integrated with the rating information. In another embodiment, equal to or less than 100 top results are integrated with the rating information. In yet another embodiment, equal to or less than 25 or 10 top results are integrated with the rating information. In one embodiment, the number of search results integrated with rating information is set so that the search results are returned to the user within the time frame acceptable to most users (to avoid delay).
The number of search results that would be considered for overlay of third-party rating information, and the space and format of the overlay information presented to the user depend on the value of the third-party rating information added to the users. Internet search users expect search results being return in a reasonable amount of time, i.e. descent search returning performance. Internet search users also expect the search results being presented in formats that appeal to the users; therefore, the presentation of the third-party rating information must meet Internet users' expectation. In addition, Internet search users expect rating information that has a certain level of quality to make the information meaningful and useful to the users. Therefore, user expectation must be met in providing the third-party rating information.
The integration of search results with rating information should not significantly increase the time it takes to return the search results to a user. Since most users only view the top view returned pages of search results, integrating top search results with rating information would be acceptable to the majority of users. In one embodiment, the search system can allow users to request overlaying (or integrating) more search results with rating information. For example, there could be a “more overlay” button 250 on search page 200′ that allows users to choose to have overlays of rating information on higher number of search results. When a user makes such a selection, the user might be willing to wait for longer time for the integrated search results to appear.
As mentioned above, the third parties that provide rating and evaluation services send rating related information to search server 50 or rating server 51 to be integrated and be presented with the search results. The rating related information can include the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) of the companies, organizations, stores, or web sites, etc., that provide products and/or services being rated, the ratings, the URL of the third party web site, and the image representing the third party.
The data sent by the third party can be updated periodically by the third party. The third party can send the updated file to the search system, such as search server 50. Alternatively, the data can be sent through data feed by using data feed tools, such as Yahoo! Pipes or other methods.
The inserted third party rating, such as rating 214 of research result 202′ of
There is one more way of building annotations (or overlay inserts), which involves using a bookmarklet from a developer's or an administrator's browser. The bookmarklet is constructed by an API. The developer or the administrator is an employee of a third party that provides rating and/or review services on products and/or services. When the developer (or administrator) is on a page describing the product(s) or service(s) the developer's firm performs rating and/or review, the developer (or an administrator) can press “Save to Bookmarks” to save the URL of the page. This action will allow developer add URLs to the user's/developer's bookmarks.
In one embodiment, when the developer or the administrator pushes the “Save to Bookmarks” button, a window appears to allow the developer or the administrator to enter rating related information, to the product or service described on the page being bookmarked.
Using a bookmarklet allows the developer or the administrator a simple way of accumulating a list of URLs with accompanying text that describes rating related information of the URL. There are tools and programs available for using API to generate a bookmarklet. For example, “del.icio.us” provides tools for making bookmarks.
Many search engines utilize various mechanisms, such as cookies, to track the users while users conduct searches. The search engines that track users during searches construct profiles of users based on the past search terms, search pages viewed, and other web usages accumulated by the companies that own the search engines. The mechanisms that are used to track users can also be utilized to customize overlay of third party rating for each user. Users can choose the third parties whose rating information they desire to receive or allow to be integrated with their search results. This customization allows users to filter out unwanted third-party ratings, and only allow the selected third-party ratings to be overlayed (or integrated) in their search results.
Alternatively, the search engine can offer a default setting of allowing all overlay, or selected overlay, to be included in the search results. For example,
At step 451, a search engine is configured to include rating information of a number of third parties that offer rating information to be integrated with the search results. The third parties that provide rating information to the search engine are pre-selected by the administrators of the search engine, in one embodiment. At step 452, the search engine is configured to include rating information with a number of the top results. As discussed above, the number could be any integer number. For example, the number could be 1000, 100, 25 or 10. The number is set to not significantly affect the search return time. At step 453, the search engine receives a search request from a user. At step 455, the search engine returns search results that are integrated with third-party rating information. In one embodiment, the search engine check the user's profile to determine rating information from which third parties are allowed to be integrated with the search results of the user.
As mentioned above, third parties that offer ratings can benefit from offering rating information to search engines. The benefit includes, but not limited to, gaining recognitions from users using search engines. As mentioned above, users can click on the images, such as image 231 of
Third party ratings give users additional information on the search results and help users decide whether to click on the search results with the additional third party rating information. Third parties that offer rating services can also gain more name recognition by providing rating information to the search engine. In one embodiment, the search engine can offer rewards, such as money, to third parties that provide information to be integrated with the search engine. In another embodiment, third parties that provides ratings offers incentives, such as money, to search engines for integrating their ratings (or reviews) in the search results. Third parties offer incentives to the search engines (or companies that own the search engines) for displaying their ratings with the search results because the third parties would gain more recognition from users.
The concept of this invention can be applied to any search engines and any third party that offers rating (or review) services. In addition, the concept can be applied to any information provided by third parties. Information provided by third parties to be integrated is not limited to rating information. Reviews or comments can also be included. With the above embodiments in mind, it should be understood that the invention might employ various computer-implemented operations involving data stored in computer systems. These operations are those requiring physical manipulation of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical or magnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. Further, the manipulations performed are often referred to in terms, such as producing, identifying, determining, or comparing.
The invention can also be embodied as computer readable code on a computer readable medium. The computer readable medium is any data storage device that can store data, which can be thereafter read by a computer system. The computer readable medium may also include an electromagnetic carrier wave in which the computer code is embodied. Examples of the computer readable medium include hard drives, network attached storage (NAS), read-only memory, random-access memory, CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs, magnetic tapes, and other optical and non-optical data storage devices. The computer readable medium can also be distributed over a network coupled computer system so that the computer readable code is stored and executed in a distributed fashion.
Any of the operations described herein that form part of the invention are useful machine operations. The invention also relates to a device or an apparatus for performing these operations. The apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purposes, or it may be a general-purpose computer selectively activated or configured by a computer program stored in the computer. In particular, various general-purpose machines may be used with computer programs written in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may be more convenient to construct a more specialized apparatus to perform the required operations.
The above-described invention may be practiced with other computer system configurations including hand-held devices, microprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers and the like. Although the foregoing invention has been described in some detail for purposes of clarity of understanding, it will be apparent that certain changes and modifications may be practiced within the scope of the appended claims. Accordingly, the present embodiments are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive, and the invention is not to be limited to the details given herein, but may be modified within the scope and equivalents of the appended claims. In the claims, elements and/or steps do not imply any particular order of operation, unless explicitly stated in the claims.