Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2001-05-17
2003-06-17
Rones, Charles (Department: 2175)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C705S026640
Reexamination Certificate
active
06581072
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to identifying and accessing information stored by communication and information networks. More particularly, the present invention describes techniques for identifying and accessing information of interest to a use while preserving the privacy of the user.
With the widespread use of computers, an expanding telecommunication network, and the rising popularity of communication networks such as the Internet, an increasing amount of information is contained in documents stored by computer systems coupled to the communication networks. Users can access these documents by using computer systems coupled to the communication networks. For example, a user can browse the Internet and access web pages stored by servers coupled to the Internet.
Computer systems connected to communication networks such as the Internet can generally be classified as “clients” or “servers” depending on the role the computer systems play with respect to requesting information or storing/providing information. Computers systems which are used by users to access information are typically called “client” computers. Computer systems which store information and provide the information to client computers are usually referred to as “server” systems. Accordingly, server systems are responsible for receiving information requests from client systems, performing processing required to satisfy the requests, and for forwarding the results/information corresponding to the information requests back to the requesting client systems. The processing required to satisfy the client request may be performed by a single server system or may alternatively be delegated to other servers connected to the communication network, such as the Internet. It should be apparent that a particular computer system may function both as a server and a client.
In the World Wide Web (“Web”) environment, information resources are typically stored in the form of hypertext documents called “web pages” which can be accessed and read by users of the Web. A web page may incorporate any combination of text, graphics, audio and video content, software programs, and other data. Web pages may also contain hypertext links to other web pages. Web pages are typically stored on web servers or content servers coupled to the Internet. Each web page is uniquely identified by an address called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that enables users to access the web page.
Users typically access web pages using a program called a “web browser” which generally executes on a client computer coupled to the Internet. The web browser is a type of client application that enables users to select, retrieve, and perceive information contained in web pages. Examples of browsers include the Internet Explorer browser program provided by Microsoft Corporation, the Netscape Navigator browser provided by Netscape Corporation, and others. Users generally access web pages by providing URL information to the browser, either directly or indirectly, and the browser responds by retrieving the web page corresponding to the user-provided URL from the Internet. The retrieved web page is then displayed to the requesting user on the client computer.
Due to the vast volume of information available via communication networks such as the Internet, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a user to identify documents which contain information of interest to the user or documents which are relevant to the user. For example, in a Web environment, a user may be interested in locating web pages containing information on a particular topic, e.g., Thai cooking. In a Web environment, the user may locate the relevant web pages by accessing one or more web servers, and browsing through web pages stored by the one or more web servers to identify web pages containing information related to Thai cooking. However, searching for web pages in this manner is a non-trivial task because the user does not typically know which web servers store information of interest to the user. Further, since each web server may store a vast number of web pages, in order to find web pages containing information of interest to the user (e.g., web pages containing information related to Thai cooking), the user is often forced to sift through large volumes of information and web pages, most of which are irrelevant to the user. As a result, the task of identifying relevant web pages can be very time consuming and frustrating to the user, and may not yield the results desired by the user.
In order to alleviate the above problem, most users generally use programs which help identify relevant documents from a large pool of documents. These programs are commonly referred to as search engines and are generally executed by servers coupled to the communication network. Examples of search engines in the Internet environment include search engines provided by Yahoo, Google, Lycos, Excite, Altavista, and the like which enable users to identify web pages of interest to the user.
Search engines typically use a crawler or a spider to find information about documents stored by the communication network which are accessible to the search engine and which can be located and searched using the search engine. For example, in a Web environment, a crawler may access web pages and URL links to other web pages embedded in the web pages, and so on. For each web page accessed by the crawler, the crawler discovers information about the web page including the URL of the web page, the contents of the web page, the web server storing the web page, and the like. The information collected by a crawler is usually stored by the server providing the search engine in the form of an index.
An index built by a search engine generally facilitates identification of documents based on criteria related to the documents or their contents. The criteria may include words occurring in the documents, concepts or topics to which the documents relate, subject matter of the documents, and the like. The structure of an index may vary based on the search engine. For example, in a Web environment, a particular search engine may prepare an index mapping words found in a plurality of web pages to the URLs corresponding to the web pages. In another index, the information may be indexed based on titles, headings, subheadings, etc. found in the web pages, or based upon concepts and topics extracted from the web pages contents, and so on. In general, indices are built in a way that facilitates the identification of the documents and/or locations of the documents. In a Web environment, the locations of documents may be identified by URLs corresponding to the web pages.
A search engine also provides a search tool which allows users to identify documents of interest using information stored in the index generated by the search engine. In order to identify documents of interest, a user generally configures a query using a client computer. The query may contain query terms which describe, for example, a topic or concept for which the user is interested in finding more information. For example, if the user is interested in finding information on Thai cooking, the query terms may include the words “Thai” and “cooking.”
The user-configured query is then communicated from the user's client computer to a remote server system executing a search engine. Upon receiving the search query, the search engine executing on the remote server identifies documents (or locations of the documents) which match or satisfy the user query based upon information stored in the index used by the search engine. The search engine may use various techniques to determine documents which are relevant to the search query received from the user's client system. Information identifying the relevant documents or their locations determined by the search engine is then communicated from the search engine server to the user's client computer. The user may then use the information received from the search engine to access one or more of the relevant do
Mathur Rakesh
Nayak Pangal P.
Subramonian Ramesh
Thomas Joy A.
Venkata Ramana
Rones Charles
Townsend and Townsend / and Crew LLP
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