Google's search patent...

[Dave Farber <farber () trial danger net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: John Shoch
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Google's search patent...
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 16:35:18 -0800

Dave,
I can't resist a quick reply to this article on Google search.
[Feel free to distribute to IP, if you like -- but please delete my 
email address]
-------------------------------------

Google deserves tremendous credit for building a great search site.
But let's be clear that the basic underlying concept has been around for 
a long time, in the world of hard-copy journal papers.
Those papers have references, which we can think of as links going out 
of each document.
But a set of publications known as The Citation Index inverts that data 
base of links, to find out which papers are most frequently referenced 
by other research papers.
If you write papers which are frequently referenced by others, your 
paper bubbles to the top of the list -- and it will help you get 
tenure!  I think they even used to issue certificates to the authors of 
highty-cited papers.
The article on Google reports, 'Next, it calculates a "local score 
value" that quantifies "an amount that the documents are referenced by 
other documents in the generated set of documents," according to the 
filing.'

Yes, I know there is a lot more to the Google ranking mechanism......but 
the basic mechanism sounds a lot like The Citation Index to me....

John Shoch
Alloy Ventures

[PS:  I used Google to find this reference for the Citation Index, sold 
by Thomson ISI:  http://www.isinet.com/isi/products/]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 2:01 PM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Google's search patent...



------ Forwarded Message
From: "Gillmor, Dan" <DGillmor () sjmercury com>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 13:57:22 -0800
To: "'dave () farber net'" <dave () farber net>
Subject: Google's search patent...

news.com.com

Google lands Web search patent
By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
February 26, 2003, 5:02 PM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1024-986204.html
Google this week was granted its first patent by the United States 
Patent Office for a method of determining the relevance of Web pages in 
relation to search queries.

The patent, which Google filed on Jan. 30, 2001, and was granted 
Tuesday, governs methodology for parsing through Web documents to 
deliver Web surfers the most relevant pages for their queries.

Specifically, it deals with "an improved search engine that refines a 
document's relevance score based on interconnectivity of the document 
within a set of relevant documents," according to a summary of the 
patent.

The invention could affect search companies that are building technology 
to intelligently rank Web pages in relation to search queries. In the 
last year, Web search has become one of the hottest markets on the 
Internet. Many companies are furiously developing advanced tools and 
techniques that will index the Web more effectively and so, they hope, 
draw visitors.

As the top destination site for online searches, Google fields more than 
150 million worldwide queries every day. When a visitor types a keyword 
into the search field, its Web servers send the request to an index 
server, which identifies Web pages containing words that match the 
query. Document servers with the matching pages deliver links to the 
visitor in less than half a second, according to Google's site.

The new patent deals with the process for finding matching documents. 
Under the methodology, Google turns up an initial set of documents 
related to the keyword and then ranks each page with a "relevance 
score." Next, it calculates a "local score value" that quantifies "an 
amount that the documents are referenced by other documents in the 
generated set of documents," according to the filing. Finally, the local 
score values influence the relevance ranking of a page.

According to the patent, "a search engine modifies the relevance 
rankings for a set of documents based on the interconnectivity of the 
documents in the set. A document with a high interconnectivity with 
other documents in the initial set of relevant documents indicates that 
the document has 'support' in the set, and the document's new ranking 
will increase. In this manner, the search engine re-ranks the initial 
set of ranked documents to thereby refine the initial rankings."

The invention's assignee is Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, and its 
inventor is Krishna Bharat, a senior research scientist at the company. 
He holds a doctorate in computer science from Georgia Institute of 
Technology.

Google would not comment on the patent.

The company now has three outstanding patent applications. Two concern 
methods and technology for providing search results in response to an 
ambiguous search query. The third deals with methodology and technology 
for delivering search results that use analysis of Web page usage.

In addition, Google co-founder Larry Page invented a methodology called 
PageRank, which was patented to the board of trustees of the Leland 
Stanford Junior University on September 2001. PageRank is one of 
Google's recipes for calculating the popularity and relevance of Web 
pages based on the number of other pages linking to it.
--farber

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To unsubscribe or update your address, click
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/