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MS Patent Applications Reveal Search Technology
eldavojohn writes, "In the roughly 90 patents they applied for on November 2, 2006, Microsoft reveals that it is apparently pushing its research in the search engine market. There are a few patents that reveal improved ranking methods and document classification but the real interesting ones revolve around linking related queries, optimizing search, identifying results that are spam, and using a Bayesian classifier to measure feedback from the user. If that's not enough, there's even a few I don't quite understand. Another notable Microsoft application for a patent is the model for assisting children in authoring stories so you can't accuse Microsoft of not thinking of the children. Microsoft regularly applies for many patents but never so many revolving around search."
This patent sounds like they've patented the idea of recording which search links are clicked on most often for a given query, thus providing feedback given a random session number of which links you clicked on, and if you came back and tried something else.
it would improve search results for future searchers, but I dunno if I like the idea of my search being tracked.
Not only do my searched probably already get tracked without my knowledge but I might be completely wrong about this patent as I only perused it.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A hit is a hit is a hit, regardless of the intent. You might not like it but the numbers aren't false.
.com at the end" and ignores the results? Or better yet, how many hits resulted in an intentional search? *That* would be a more useful number. I've always had a problem with how folks quantify how well a thing is on the Internet by the number of hits it gets. Hits have the potential of being arbitrary and artificially inflated, as the original poster stated, and in my opinion provide little useful information.
/gam/
That may be. But how many non-false hits were unintentional and thus serving useless search information to someone that just says "whoops, I meant to type in the
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
I've used google exclusively for about 5 years or so, and finding their quality is very much downhill over the last year or so. Tired of the link farms and junk.
I decided a couple weeks ago to try live.com after seeing some article about creating your own search engine using macros (haven't tried that yet). But so far, the results are no worse than google's (perhaps because linkfarms and content spamming and such is optimized to work on google? don't know for sure). They seem pretty motivated to improve their results and features too (the macro thing sounds useful, and they've got this "Get ready for a new dimension in search...November 7th" on their page too, some might be something new again) - they certainly are trying, and they're getting there. BTW, they're also very good for non-english searches too (perhaps better than google on this one, but that likely depends on the actual language)
Their image search totally rocks! Far more results on one page than google image search, results are better, you get links to the pages AND to the images themselves (something google doesn't give you), and you can even dynamically resize the thumbnails and such. Very slick. Google image search is WAY behind on this one.
And their maps loads a LOT faster than google's, and work far better (no waiting for all the pictures making up a map to slowly load (for every zoom level), and then half the time having to drag it out and back because pictures some didn't load at all). It just works, and very quickly. I like the google maps controls better still, but like anything there's always some adaptation to a new interface. (No idea about map coverage for whatever countries or such, but it works very good for North America at least). The maps themselves look nicer too IMO.
Their "local" is no worse than google's (at least for where I live, I've searched for small shops and such - it finds 'em easily). There's a bunch more things I haven't had time to look at yet (expo, gallery, etc)
The only thing they don't really provide that I still use google for is searching google groups for old posts.
If google wants me back, it'll be like the old search engine wars: drop the irrelevant products nobody cares about, and actually improve your search results. I'm tired of staying with google because of the old "googling" habit. When I find a better search engine, I use it. It's what forces other search engine makers to improve theirs.
I'm not trolling or anything, just try it, you'll be quite surprised too.
This Patent application for a system to analyze and compare of portfolios by citation submitted by Microsoft sounds like it might actually help a patent examiner find prior art for all these Microsoft software patents. It describes a system for classifying documents and finding and analyzing relations (citations) between two sets of documents. Although that does sound a lot like PageRank and anchor text analysis doesn't it?