The Most Exciting Year for Search Engines? Options

[bragadocchio]

Now, with Teoma, as I mentioned before, we're going into the next generation. I want to get you excited because 2005 is going to be the most exciting year for search engines.

Now it's not just about communities, it's about the users. There are new technologies coming in which will change the way that people access information.

From Mike Grehan's "In conversation with...\" Jim Lanzone & Apostolos Gerasoulis of Ask Jeeves/Teoma

Are some of those things coming out which will make this "the most exciting year for search engines?"

Sorting through the patent applications that came out of the US Patent Office this week, I found the following applications with Apostolos Gerasoulis listed as one of the inventors. The last three have the same title, different abstracts, and some slight variations.


Methods and systems for conceptually organizing and presenting information
Filed: May 24, 2004, Published June 9, 2005
Inventors: Andy Curtis, Alan Levin, Apostolos Gerasoulis

Abstract

Methods and systems for conceptually organizing and presenting information. A correlation of multiple users' responses to the organization and presentation of information is used to determine an optimal organization and presentation of the information. For one embodiment of the invention, in the context of search engine result optimization, the user activity and/or user information of multiple users, during a search session, is correlated with queries to effect an evolving association between queries and the organization and presentation of documents. Systems in accordance with such embodiments employ the ability to store users' activity over the entire search session, thus making possible the correlation of a number of different types of user activity and user information. The use of correlated user input allows such systems to provide relevant search results without the limitations imposed by the key-word-based systems of the prior art.

Methods and systems for providing a response to a query
Filed: May 25, 2004, Published June 9, 2005
Inventors: Andy Curtis, Alan Levin, Apostolos Gerasoulis

Abstract

Methods and systems for providing a response to a query. Multiple users' search engine activity in regard to a query is correlated. A response is provided based upon this correlated search engine activity information. For one embodiment of the invention, in the context of search engine result optimization, the user activity and/or user information of multiple users, during a search session, is correlated with queries to effect an evolving association between queries and the organization and presentation of documents. Systems in accordance with such embodiments employ the ability to store users' activity over the entire search session, thus making possible the correlation of a number of different types of user activity and user information. The use of correlated user input allows such systems to provide relevant search results without the limitations imposed by the key-word-based systems of the prior art.

Methods and systems for providing a response to a query

Inventors: Andy Curtis, Alan Levin, Apostolos Gerasoulis
Filed: August 12, 2004, Published June 9, 2005

Abstract

Methods and systems for providing a response to a query. A plurality of picks issued during a same search session are associated. A query is received from a user and a search result is provided corresponding to the query. In response to a user issuing a pick, one or more of the associated picks are provided. For one embodiment of the invention, search result URLs are associated with one or more queries where picks of such URLs and the queries were contained in a search session. In response to a query, search results are provided that include one or more URLs and any queries associated with each URL.

Methods and systems for providing a response to a query
Filed: September 16, 2004, Published June 9, 2005
Inventors: Andy Curtis, Alan Levin, Apostolos Gerasoulis

Abstract

Methods and systems for providing a response to a user's query based on other users' picks. For one embodiment of the invention, user responses are correlated to determine an affinity among users. User affinity is then used to modify the presentation of the search results. For one embodiment the location of other user's is used to modify the presentation of the search results.

[MUSCLE13]

I like the personalizing of search to user preferences or needs, but I believe a bigger trend this year is going to be the continuing growth of integrating portals with search. Over the last year or so Google has become much more of a portal - Blogger, GMail, News, Froogle etc. I think Ask is going in this direction as well. I found this url many months ago just by chance, typing in random urls. My opinion is they are testing the integration of Ask and MyWay

http://ask.myway.com

[bragadocchio]

Maybe. The year isn't half over, and we don't know what will come out before we say hello to 2006.

The ask.myway.com is interesting. Thanks for pointing it out.

I have to confess that I was surprised not to see any patents with the name Apostolos Gerasoulis on them when I searched earlier this week. So it's good to see these patent applications with his name on them.

I did do some searching around to see what other Ask Jeeves patents and patent applications were out there. I'm not sure that I've seen a list anywhere.

More Jeeves Patents/patent applications

United States Patent Application 20030187837
October 2, 2003
Personalized search method
Inventor: Gary A. Culliss
Assignee Name: Ask Jeeves, Inc.

Abstract
A method of organizing information in which the search activity of previous users is monitored and such activity is used to organize articles for future users. Personal data about future users can be used to provide different article rankings depending on the search activity and personal data of the previous users.

United States Patent 6,584,464
June 24, 2003
Grammar template query system
Inventor: David Warthen
Assignee: Ask Jeeves, Inc.
Filed: March 19, 1999

Abstract
An information server directs users of the information server to desired sources of information where the desired sources of information are determined, at least in part, based on user input. The information server includes a query input processor, a question processor and an answer processor. The query input processor is used for accepting an initial user query. The question processor processes the initial user query to identify a set of possible well-formed questions selected from the question database, where a well-formed question is a question in the database that is coupled to at least one answer reference. The answer reference is typically either an answer or a pointer to a possible location of an answer. In a specific embodiment, the information server is coupled to the Internet so that users can pose questions using a Web browser from any Internet-connected device. In some systems, the question processor includes a tokenizer for tokenizing the initial user query into a list of words, a parser for generating a syntactic structure from the list of words, a normalizer for reducing the syntactic structure to a canonical syntactic structure, and a matcher for matching the canonical syntactic structure against a semantic network to obtain a weighted list of well-formed questions representative of possible semantic meanings for the initial user query.

United States Patent Application 20030069880
April 10, 2003
Natural language query processing
Inventors: Tom Harrison, Michael E. Barrett, Swarup Reddi, John Lowe, Gary Chevsky
Assignee Name: Ask Jeeves, Inc.

Abstract
An enhanced natural language information retrieval technique tokenizes an incoming query, comparing the tokenized representation against a collection of query templates. Query templates include a first portion having one or more query patterns representative of a query and in a form suitable for matching the tokenized representation of an incoming query. Query templates also include one or more information retrieval commands that are designed to return information relevant to those query patterns in its first portion. The enhanced natural language information retrieval technique selects those query templates that are determined to be most relevant to the incoming query (via its tokenized representation) and initiates one or more information retrieval commands associated with the selected query templates.

United States Patent 6,539,377
March 25, 2003
Personalized search methods
Inventor: Gary A. Culliss
Assignee: Ask Jeeves, Inc.
Filed: October 6, 2000

Abstract
A method of organizing information in which the search activity of previous users is monitored and such activity is used to organize articles for future users. Personal data about future users can be used to provide different article rankings depending on the search activity and personal data of the previous users.

United States Patent Application 20020077931
June 20, 2002
Automated decision advisor
Inventors: Max Henrion, Lonnie Chrisman, Zac Robinson
Assignee Name: Ask Jeeves, Inc.

Abstract
The present invention provides an automated system to guide people (\"users\") to help them find and select products, services, or other items, that best meet their needs and preferences. The system obtains information from and about users to assess their needs and preferences. The system dynamically selects those questions to ask that are most likely to help discriminate between items based on information about user preferences and differences between the items, based on information about the user obtained so far. The system scores the available items in terms of how well they match user's needs and preferences and generates lists of recommended items. The system explains its recommendations using lists of pros and cons to help users understand how well the features or attributes of the items do or do not match their expressed needs.

United States Patent 6,182,068
Culliss January 30, 2001
Personalized search methods
Inventor: Gary Culliss
Assignee: Ask Jeeves, Inc.
Filed: March 1, 1999

Abstract
A method of organizing information in which the search activity of previous users is monitored and such activity is used to organize articles for future users. Personal data about future users can be used to provide different article rankings depending on the search activity and personal data of the previous users.

No assignee name on these two patent applications, but I did notice that one of the inventors was a name I recognized from Ask Jeeves (Rahul Lahiri).

United States Patent Application 20040044659
March 4, 2004
Apparatus and method for searching and retrieving structured, semi-structured and unstructured content
Inventors: Douglass Russell Judd, Bruce D. Karsh, Ram Subbaroyan, Troy Toman, Rahul Lahiri, Rahul, Patrick Lok

Abstract
A search and retrieval permits a user to search free text within sections of schema independent documents. The documents, which may include structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents, contain text organized into a plurality of sections, such as XML tags. The repository of documents is schema independent, such that the search system does not require pre-defined fields for the sections. To execute a search, the search system receives a query that specifies at least one section and at least one free text query construct for text within the section. In general, the free text query construct specifies at least one free text search condition. The search system identifies sections in the repository of documents as specified in the query, and evaluates the free text query construct for the text within sections to determine whether the free text search condition is met.

United States Patent Application 20050033641
February 10, 2005
System, method and computer program product for presenting directed advertising to a user via a network
Inventors: Vikas Jha, Rahul Lahiri, Ram Subbaroyan

Abstract
A system method and computer program product for presenting an advertisement is described. A request to access a web page may be received from a requester via a network. The request to access the web page may be generated in response to selection of a link to the web page on another web page. A response may be transmitted back to the requester via the network. The response may include the requested web page as well as an ad script that may be executed after receipt of the response by the requester. The ad script may generate an ad request that includes one or more ad parameters extracted from the response. These ad parameters may include information about a network address of the other page. The generated ad request may then be received via the network. One or more advertisements may then be selected for presentment to the requester utilizing the ad parameters of the ad request.