Yahoo! Inc.

Jollify Management Limited

Overture Services, Inc.

John Thrall

Alastair Robert Gourlay

Shyam Kapur

Ashley Woodman Hall

Mihir Shah

Oliver Thomas Bayley

Richard Kasperski

Peter Anick

Ralph Rabbat

Stephen L Hood

Adam Durfee

Qi Lu

David Ku

Deepa Joshi

Ethan A Fassett

David E Hall

Deepak Agarwal

Jignashu Parikh

Bee-Chung Chen

Ramesh R Sarukkai

Amitabh Seth

Raghu Ramakrishnan

Nitin Motgi

Ruofei Zhang

Pradheep K Elango

Howard Scott Roy

Peter G Anick

Vik Singh

Vijay Krishna Narayanan

Owen Pingchi Cheung

Michael Salisbury

Michael Elliott

Brian Evan McMullin

Sai Surya Kiran Evani

Joe Zachariah

Sharat Israni

Chandar Venkataraman

Amit Phadke

Providing a speculative search result for a search query prior to completion of the search query is described. In response to receiving a search query from a client node, a speculative search result is provided to the client node for the search query prior to receiving an indication from the client node that said search query is completely formed. The speculative search result may be displayed on the same web page on the client node as the search query, while the search query is being entered by the user. As the user further enters the search query, a new speculative search result may be provided to the user.

Speculative search result on a not-yet-submitted search query

A search query is received. Personal information for a user is then determined. A search is performed in a general subdomain of general content using the search query. For example, the general subdomain of general content may be a WWW search. Then, a vertical subdomain is determined based on the personal information. A search is then performed in the vertical subdomain of specialized content using the search query. The search performed in the general subdomain and the search performed in the vertical subdomain generate general search results and vertical search results. The results may be combined and outputted to a client.

Lateral search

The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for indexing one or more items of content. The method of the present invention comprises extracting one or more items of text from a given item of content. The one or more items of extracted text are tokenized into one or more concepts. One or more related concepts associated with the one or more concepts are identified. A support score is generated for the one or more concepts, and the item of content is index with the one or more concepts and the one or more associated support scores.

System and method for determining concepts in a content item using context

Providing a speculative search result for a search query prior to completion of the search query. In response to receiving a search query from a client node, a speculative search result is provided to the client node for the search query prior to receiving an indication from the client node that said search query is completely formed. The speculative search result may be displayed on the same web page on the client node as the search query, while the search query is being entered by the user. As the user further enters the search query, a new speculative search result may be provided to the user.

A system and method for publishing a file on a network is. A caching service reduces the load on the publisher's server by publishing that the file is at a fictitious network location. Requests directed to the fictitious location are received by the caching service and the fictitious network location is parsed to determine what file is being requested. If the caching service already has a copy of the file, then the copy is transmitted to the requestor without alerting to the requester that the address is fictitious. If the caching service does not have a copy of the file, then a copy is automatically obtained based on information contained in the fictitious network location.

File caching

A system is described for discovering query intent based on search queries and concept networks. The system may construct frequency vectors from log data corresponding to a submitted query and at least one related query submitted to one or more search engines. The system may also construct a query intent vector based on the frequency vectors. The query intent vector may include frequency scores that represent the intent of the query.

Discovering query intent from search queries and concept networks

A method and apparatus for customizing content presented to individual users or user segments is provided. There may be three components, a web portal and toolbar component, a modeling component, and a scoring component. The web portal and toolbar component presents content items and collects data. The web portal and toolbar component generates user event data based on the user actions. The user event data is forwarded to the modeling component. The modeling component generates content scoring functions based on user event data and attributes of content items. Content scoring functions may be unique to individual user segments. The content scoring functions based on content features generate probability a content item will be viewed. The scoring component decides which content items are placed in a portal. The scoring component uses the scoring functions generated by the modeling component to rank content items in real time.

Customized today module

The present invention provides systems, methods and computer-readable media comprising program code for affording access to a preferred provider of audio content. A method according to one embodiment of the present invention for presenting a control to navigate to a server for a preferred provider of audio content comprises identifying a link to an item of audio content in a result set generated in response to a search by the given user for one or more items of audio content. A preferred audio provider is determined for a given user and whether the item of audio content is available at the preferred audio provider for the given user. If the item of audio content is available at the preferred audio provider, a control is presented to navigate to a server of the preferred provider from which the user may download or stream the item of audio content.

System and method for accessing preferred provider of audio content

Performing an ordered search of different databases in response to receiving a search query and without receiving any additional user input

Methods and apparatus are described by which media assets may be prioritized and published in accordance with current topics of interest derived from a dynamic data set representing the online activity of a relevant population of users.

Prioritizing media assets for publication

The present invention is directed to systems, methods and computer-readable media comprising program code for dynamically ranking links to items of audio content returned to a user in response to the execution of a query by a search engine. A method according to one embodiment of the present invention for dynamically ranking links to items of audio content returned to a user in response to the execution of a query by a search engine comprises receiving a query to identify links to one or more items of audio content; parsing the query into one or more logical units; determining an annotation for each of the one or more logical units; selecting a ranking heuristic according to the annotation for each of the one or more logical units and ranking a result set according to the selected ranking heuristic.

System and method for dynamically ranking items of audio content

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

John Thrall