Yahoo! Inc.

Jollify Management Limited

Peter Anick

Ashley Woodman Hall

Shyam Kapur

Mihir Shah

Oliver Thomas Bayley

John Thrall

Alastair Robert Gourlay

Richard Kasperski

Ralph Rabbat

Stephen L Hood

Adam Durfee

Swati Raju

Jeremy Hubert

Ryan Grove

Daniel Eric Rose

Liang-Yu Tom Chi

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 user selection of a link on a first webpage that is being displayed is received. A copy of the first webpage is stored in cache memory at a local client machine. Responsive to receiving the user selection of the link: the copy of the first webpage stored in the cache memory is modified at the local client machine to include metadata associated with the user selection of the link on the first webpage; and a second webpage associated with the link is presented. A request to reload the first webpage is received. Responsive to receiving the request to reload the first webpage: the metadata from the first webpage stored in the cache memory is obtained; a third webpage based on the metadata is obtained; and the third webpage is displayed.

Query refinement based on user selections

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.

To adapt search results to a user's needs, the search results display is modified based on the user's selections within the search results. Based on the user selections within the search results, the original search results may be ranked and/or ordered based on relevance to the selected search results. Based on the user selections within the search results, a new search criteria may be generated and presented to the user as a suggested search criteria. Based on the user selections within the search results, a new search may be performed to obtain new search results.

The present invention relates to providing vector terms for use in formulating search requests in response to a user query. The method according to one embodiment comprises receiving a search query from a client and identifying links to one or more content items corresponding to the search query. One or more term vectors are then generated corresponding to the content items and one or more vector terms are selected from the term vectors. The links to the one or more content items and selected vector terms are combined to form a final result page.

System and method for providing vector terms related to a search query

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

Techniques for automatically generating and displaying topic-focused summaries for search results are disclosed. Users can 'peek' inside a search result to see document excerpts that pertain specifically to a user-selected topic. Thus, a user can view the aspects of a document that are most interesting prior to deciding whether to retrieve the complete document. For each search result, a user can select from among several different available summaries, each of which focuses on a different topic of the document to which that search result refers. According to one aspect, key concepts are automatically identified in a document. For each such key concept, contextual snippets that pertain to that key concept are automatically selected. The key concepts are displayed to the user at search time. A summary that contains the contextual snippets that pertain to a user-selected key concept is displayed in response to the user's selection of that key concept.

Topic-focused search result summaries

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

Growing community of inventors

Marlborough, MA, United States of America

Peter Anick