Yahoo! Inc.

Tellme Networks, Inc.

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Excalibur Ip, LLC

Slack Technologies, Inc.

Cardspring, LLC

Oath Inc.

Eckart Walther

Qi Lu

David Ku

Ali Diab

Kevin Lee

Chung-Man Tam

Brandon William Porter

Zhichen Xu

Hadi Partovi

John Giannandrea

Jianchang Mao

Thai Tran

Angus Macdonald Davis

Scott A Gatz

Shyam Kapur

Michael S McCue

Roderick Steven Brathwaite

Jeff Weiner

Phu Hoang

Norman Shi

Lynne Pogue

Yuan Kui Shen

Chuck Kung

Kenneth Norton

Zhe Li

Nam Nguyen

Daphne Huetu Luong

Anthony Accardi

Daniel Eric Rose

Jeffrey B Winner

James Robert Everingham

Matthew T Marx

Jeff C Kunins

Erik Castedo Ellerman

Andrew Clarke

Tom Thai

Daniel Joseph Howard

Geraud Boyer

Amit Kumar

Patrick McCormick

Jason Brant Douglas

Pavel Berkhin

Luke Wroblewski

Pasha Sadri

Rob McCool

Eugene Koh

Michael W Albers

E Castedo Ellerman

Pavel Berkin

Dan Rose

Jiangchang Mao

Benjamin Garrett

Andy Scott

Angus MacDonald

Computer systems and methods incorporate user annotations (metadata) regarding various pages or sites, including annotations by a querying user and by members of a trust network defined for the querying user into search and browsing of a corpus such as the World Wide Web. A trust network is defined for each user, and annotations by any member of a first user's trust network are made visible to the first user during search and/or browsing of the corpus. Users can also limit searches to content annotated by members of their trust networks or by members of a community selected by the user.

Search system and methods with integration of user annotations from a trust network

A technique for tracking conversion of an online offer includes tracking online and/or offline transactions. A customer accepts an offer provided by a merchant and submits his or her account information so that he or she may receive a reward for satisfying criteria associated with the offer. Transactions of the merchant are then monitored at the payment processor level to determine whether the customer satisfies the purchase criteria. Therefore, online and offline conversion can both be tracked. Further, the merchant is able to determine the overall effectiveness of advertising campaigns by analyzing the number of offers that are both accepted and satisfied.

Measuring conversion of an online advertising campaign including group offers from an offline merchant

A technique for determining the effectiveness of an offer includes analyzing views, clicks, acceptances and satisfactions of the offer. Transaction data is retrieved to determine whether criteria of the offer has been satisfied. As a result, a total cost per transaction may be determined for an advertisement campaign that incorporates the offer. Further, detailed queries may be issued to identify areas in which the offer needs improvement.

Measuring conversion of an online advertising campaign including referral offers from an offline merchant

Systems, methods, and computer program products are disclosed for asking and searching for the answer to given questions, retrieving answers to such questions, as well as presenting such answers in a user-generated content style framework on a search engine. The system of the present invention comprises a question processor, operative to determine whether a question entered by a user has been previously answered, an answer data store storing answers to previously asked questions stored therein, an answer repository storing questions not yet answered by another user, and an editor tool operative to format an answer stored in the answer data store into user-generated content style and migrate the answer to a user-generated content style web page.

System and method for maintenance of questions and answers through collaborative and community editing

Computer systems and methods allow users to annotate content items found in a corpus such as the World Wide Web Annotations, which can include any descriptive and/or evaluative metadata related to a document, are collected from a user and stored in association with that user. Users are able to annotate and view their annotations for any document they encounter while interacting with the corpus, including hits returned in a search of the corpus. Users are also able to search their annotations or to limit searches to documents they have annotated. Metadata from annotations can also be aggregated across users and aggregated metadata applied in generating search results.

Search systems and methods with integration of aggregate user annotations

Computer systems and methods allow users to annotate content items found in a corpus such as the World Wide Web. Annotations, which can include any descriptive and/or evaluative metadata related to a document, are collected from a user and stored in association with that user. Users are able to annotate and view their annotations for any document they encounter while interacting with the corpus, including hits returned in a search of the corpus. Users are also able to search their annotations or to limit searches to documents they have annotated. Metadata from annotations can also be aggregated across users and aggregated metadata applied in generating search results.

Search systems and methods with integration of user annotations

A method and apparatus for generating search results including searching by subdomain and providing sponsored results by subdomain is provided. A search system according to embodiments of the present invention analyzes search queries to determine if they are to be routed to subdomains and presents results include sponsored hits sponsored on a subdomain by subdomain basis.

Search system using search subdomain and hints to subdomains in search query statements and sponsored results on a subdomain-by-subdomain basis

Inverse search systems and methods operate on identifiers of content items in a corpus such as the World Wide Web In an inverse search, the user submits a query that includes an identifier of a target content item in the corpus and receives information (metadata) about the target content item being returned to the user. Many types of metadata can be returned, including ratings or other metadata related to the target content item obtained from users, popularity data specific to the target content item, information about previously submitted forward search queries that led to the target content item being identified as a hit, and metadata extracted from the target content item.

Inverse search systems and methods

A zero-footprint remotely hosted phone application development environment is described. The environment allows a developer to use a standard computer without any specialized software (in some embodiments all that is necessary is a web browser and network access) together with a telephone to develop sophisticated phone applications that use speech recognition and/or touch tone inputs to perform tasks, access web-based information, and/or perform commercial transactions. For example, in preparation for a sales pitch for selling hosting services, a non-programmer can develop a short application appropriate to the target customer. After the pitch, access to the demonstration could be given to the target customer to allow them to more fully develop the application. When the target customer is satisfied with the application, they can have their application live for their actual (as opposed to test users) at a suitable phone number simply by having the hosting provider configure the appropriate access. Once the source code of phone application is identified to the development environment, the developer can use a telephone to immediately call the application on the hosted development environment. Some embodiments support concurrent call flow tracking that allows a developer to observe, using a web browser, the execution of her/his application. A variety of reusable libraries are provided to enable the developer to leverage well-developed libraries for common playback, input, and computational tasks. This focuses the development on application specific logic. Embodiments of the invention simplify the process of defining speech recognition grammars within their applications. Embodiments of the invention support rapid application deployment from the development environment to hosted application deployment to the intended audience.

Zero-footprint telephone application development

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Eckart Walther