Hello my fellow geeks and welcome to the last in our series on the year that was in patents in the world of search. In case you missed the previous rambling, we're not reverse engineering. We're merely looking to learn how search engineers think.

And yes, I hear you saying, “Yahoo?? They're no longer relevant”. There's the misstep. We're not using patents (and papers) to unlock the holy grail, we're looking to learn how search geeks think at the various engines.

The Year in Search Patents from Yahoo

With Yahoo we saw many of the usual suspects as far as awards dealing with areas such as Social, Behavioural, Named Entities. Somewhat missing, or at least not as active, were Geo-local, Temporal and others.

Geo-local

• Identifying regional sensitive queries in web search
• Personalize Search Results for Search Queries with General Implicit Local Intent
• Incorporating Geographical Locations in a Search Process
• Customized geographical location indexing

Semantic and NLP

• Abbreviation handling in search
• Extracting semantic relations from query logs
• Automatic extraction of semantics from text information
• Search systems and methods using in-line contextual queries
• System and method for information retrieval using context information
• Normalizing query words in web search
• Determining relevant text in a web page

Social

• Social knowledge system content quality
• Enabling searching of user ratings and reviews using user profile location, and social networks
• System and method for ranking search results using social information
• Contextual mobile local search based on social network vitality information
• Identifying Top Content Contributors In Online Social Networks
• Social aspects of content aggregation, syndication, sharing, and updating
• Ranking of search results based on microblog data
• Method and system for socializing events
• Selectively adding social dimension to search
• Friendly search and socially augmented search query assistance layer
• Social network commerce model
  
  

Query Analysis

• Discovering query intent from search queries and concept networks
• Segmentation of search topics in query logs
• Customizable ordering of search results and predictive query generalization
• Estimating the date relevance of a query from query logs
• Automatic detection of needy queries
• System and method for URL based query for retrieving data related to a context
• Method and apparatus for reconstructing a search query
• System and method for context based query augmentation

Behavioural

• Presenting Search Results Based on User-Customizable Criteria
• Segmentation of search topics in query logs
• System for personalized term expansion and recommendation
• Implicit Name Searching
• Granular data for behavioral targeting using predictive models
• Behavioral predictions based on network activity locations
• Intent driven search result rich abstracts
• Search systems and methods with integration of user annotations
• Dynamic layout for a search engine results page on implicit user feedback
• Personalized web search ranking
• Contextual ranking of keywords using click data
  
  

Named Entities

• Mining knowledge sources for improved entity extraction
• Mining knowledge sources with auto learning for improved entity extraction
• Implicit Name Searching
• Method and system for socializing events
• Large scale entity-specific resource classification
• System and method for adding identity to web rank
  
  

Verticals/Universal; Video, News, Images, Blogs, Forums, Ecommerce

• Digital image retrieval by aggregating search results based on visual annotations
• Systems and methods for indexing and searching digital video content
• System and method for assisting search requests with vertical suggestions
• Indexing and searching digital video content
  
  

Temporal

• Search Ranking for Time-Sensitive Queries by Feedback Control
• Incorporating Recency in Network Search Using Machine Learning
• Time-based analysis of related keyword searching
• Detecting changes in the relevance of past search results
  
  

Categorization

• Search query categorization into verticals
• Topic-focused search result summaries
• Large scale concept discovery for webpage augementation using search engine indexers
• System for automatically categorizing queries
  
  

Links

• Method and system for generating a hyperlink-click graph
• System and method for detecting templates of a website using hyperlink analysis
• System and method for classifying tags of content using a hyperlinked corpus of classified web pages
  
  

Page segmentation

• Segment sensitive query matching of documents
• Automatic classification of segmented portions of web pages
• System and method for detecting a web page template
  
  

Recommendation engine

• Customizable ordering of search results and predictive query generation
• System for generating query suggestions using a network of users and advertisers

Spam

• Mitigation of search engine hijacking
• Employing pixel density to detect a spam image

Mobile

• System for separating mobile search traffic from web search traffic using keyword separation
• System for Separating Mobile Search Traffic From Web Search Traffic Using Keyword Separation (II)
  
  

Authority

• System and method for determining authority ranking for contemporaneous content
  
  

Duplicate Content

• Unsupervised detection of web pages corresponding to a similarity class
  
  

This and That...

These are the somewhat less targeted but equally interesting offerings...

Ranking methods

• Query-URL N-Gram Features in Web Ranking
• Adding identity to web rank
• Relating to ranking functions for multiple domains
• PAIRWISE Ranking based classifier
• Ranking documents
• Ranking for Informational and Unpopular Search Queries by Cumulating Click Relevance
  
  

Systemic

• System and method for smoothing hierarchical data using isotonic regression
• Techniques for crawling dynamic web content
• Performing bi-directional search
• Hierarchically-structured indexing and retrieval
• Query processing for web search

Other

• Federated searches implemented across multiple search engines
• Techniques for including collection items in search results
• Navigational assitance for search engines
• System and method for development of search success metrics
• Learning ranking functions incorporating boosted ranking in a regression framework for information retrieval and ranking
  
  

Digging a little deeper

Of course, we also have a few years worth of this stuff, so if you want more see;

• Yahoo Patents 2010
• Yahoo Patents 2009

Happy New Year to ya'll and all the best wishes for 2012!!

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