Structured Content Search Engine for Mobile Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current electronic document search technologies fail to effectively utilize structural relationships and layout structures within documents, leading to inefficient search results, particularly on mobile devices, and struggle with accurately returning relevant sub-document constituents for complex search expressions.
Innovation Solution
A structured content search engine that analyzes tree and graph structures, layout information, and content category data to identify and return relevant document constituents, using recursive procedures and proximity operators to enhance search accuracy and reduce false hits.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If standard Web search engines return entire Web pages, then search coverage is complete, but download bandwidth is wasted and screen real estate is wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments Web pages into constituent elements (text blocks, images, links, etc.) and returns only the relevant segments that match the search expression rather than entire pages. This is achieved through parsing HTML documents into tree structures and identifying matching constituents at various levels of the document hierarchy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and returns only the specific constituents that satisfy the search expression, removing irrelevant content from the search results. This extraction process filters out non-matching elements while preserving the structural relationships among matching constituents.
2Measurement precision
If standard Web search engines return entire Web pages, then search coverage is complete, but screen real estate is wasted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments Web pages into constituent elements and returns only the relevant segments that match the search expression rather than entire pages. This segmentation allows users to see only the portions of documents that are relevant to their search, conserving screen real estate on mobile devices.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and returns only the specific constituents that satisfy the search expression, removing irrelevant content from the search results. This extraction process reduces the amount of content displayed on screen while maintaining search completeness.
3Ease of manufacture
If sub-document search engines use string-based algorithms, then implementation is simple, but structural 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 information. This allows the search algorithm to exploit structural proximity relationships among constituents while maintaining implementation feasibility through systematic traversal of document structures.
4Ease of operation
If mobile browsers reformat HTML files, then presentation on mobile devices is improved, but content extraction facilities remain rudimentary
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs content extraction and formatting operations in advance on the server side before delivering content to mobile devices. This preliminary processing reduces the extraction burden on mobile devices while providing optimized content for mobile presentation, combining server-side processing power with mobile-friendly output.
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.