Structured Content Search Engine for Mobile Web Pages
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current search technologies fail to accurately retrieve relevant content from web pages, leading to wasted bandwidth and screen real estate, and are ineffective in handling complex search expressions and structural relationships within documents, resulting in false hits and sub-optimal search results on mobile devices.
Innovation Solution
A structured content search engine that analyzes tree and graph structures, layout information, and content categories to identify and return relevant document constituents, rather than entire documents, using recursive procedures and proximity operators to enhance search accuracy and reduce false positives.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If standard Web search engines return entire Web pages, then complete information is provided to users, but download bandwidth and screen real estate are wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the relevant constituents from Web pages that satisfy search expressions. Instead of returning entire pages, the system identifies and returns specific text, image, or other constituents that directly match the search criteria, eliminating unnecessary content transmission.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments Web pages into discrete constituents (text, images, other elements) and evaluates each constituent independently against search expressions. This segmentation allows selective retrieval of only those constituents that satisfy the search criteria, rather than returning the entire page as a single unit.
2Loss of information
If standard Web search engines return entire Web pages, then complete information is provided to users, but screen real estate is wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the relevant constituents from Web pages that satisfy search expressions. Instead of returning entire pages, the system identifies and returns specific text, image, or other constituents that directly match the search criteria, eliminating unnecessary content display.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments Web pages into discrete constituents and evaluates each against search expressions. This allows the display of only relevant constituents on mobile device screens, optimizing the use of limited screen real estate while maintaining information completeness.
3Device complexity
If sub-document search engines use simple markup properties or string-based algorithms, then search processing is simple, but structural proximity relationships are not exploited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from one-dimensional string-based search to multi-dimensional search by incorporating tree structure relationships and layout structure relationships. This allows the system to evaluate constituents based on multiple criteria including structural proximity, combining simplicity with accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements nested evaluation by first checking simple markup properties and string matches, then progressively evaluating tree structure relationships and layout structure relationships. This layered approach maintains simplicity while progressively adding precision through multiple evaluation dimensions.
4Ease of operation
If mobile browsers reformat HTML files, then content is adapted for mobile display, but download bandwidth is still consumed for entire pages
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the relevant constituents from Web pages before transmission to mobile devices. By returning only the necessary content that satisfies search expressions, the system eliminates the need to download and reformat entire pages, reducing bandwidth consumption while maintaining mobile display adaptation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs content extraction and formatting preparation in advance on the server side, before transmission to the mobile device. This preliminary action ensures that the content is already optimized for mobile display when received, eliminating the need for extensive client-side reformatting and reducing the data that needs to be transmitted.
Data Source
AI summary
Embodiments of methods and apparatuses for searching contents, including structured search are described herein. Embodiments of the present invention use tree structures (or more generally, graph structures), layout structures, and/or content category information to capture within search results relevant content that would otherwise be missed, to reduce the incidence of false positives within search results, and to improve the accuracy of rankings within search results. Embodiments of the present invention further use tree structures (or more generally, graph structures), layout structures, and/or content category information to extend search results to include sub-document constituents. Embodiments of the present invention also support the use of distribution properties as criteria for ranking search results. And embodiments of the present invention support search based on structural proximity, search expressions with recursively embedded operators, predicates, and/or quantifiers, and applications to selection of advertisements.