On May 11, 2010, Google was granted a new patent that basically states that all links on a page do not have to carry (or pass) the same weight. The concept is that the value a link should pass to a target page will be largely based on the probability that a user would click […]
From search to download. That’s what Google and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have done with Wednesday’s announcement that bulk data on patents and trademarks are now available for free. Google is hosting hundreds of downloadable ZIP files at google.com/googlebooks/uspto.html; the patent office estimates that nearly ten terabytes of information is available. Google and […]
The clever folks in Redmond (aided by their attorneys) appear to have found a way to gain “licensing revenue” from Android phones. That’s right. Android the OS is “free,” and that was seen, early on, as a competitive advantage vs. Windows Mobile, which had exacted a price of up to $15 dollars per unit from […]
Google has been awarded a patent entitled “Determining and/or using location information in an ad system” that has very broad implications for PC and mobile advertising. While we all take geo-targeting today for granted, back when this Google patent application was filed in April, 2004 it wasn’t as common. Dare I say it: Google may […]
Google was grated a patent that discusses a system of determining content access privileges by country/geography. While it undoubtedly has multiple uses, Google book scanning and search appears to be the primary intended use case. ArsTechnia brings it to our attention. Here’s the patent summary: A system comprising: one or more devices to implement: means […]
No, Google is not for sale. (At least as far as we know.) That barcode logo on the Google home page and its search results pages is in honor of the 57th anniversary of the barcode being patented: October 7, 1952 to Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver. If you’re thinking that Google’s really upped its […]
Gawker reports Google’s home page patent application, which was filed back in March 2004, has finally been approved yesterday, September 1, 2009. The patent is for the simplicity of the Google home page. Here is a picture of the patented home page: Postscript From Danny Sullivan: It’s unclear yet whether Google intends to enforce its […]
Google has moved off land, into the sea and the sky (space) to further some of its earthly objectives. On Saturday the GeoEye-1 satellite launched into space. The noteworthy thing about this satellite is that it has the highest resolution of any orbiter taking pictures of Earth.
Bill Slawski analyzed a newly published patent application by Google named Rendering Advertisements with Documents Having One or More Topics Using User Topic Interest Information. In short, the patent application documents methods Google can use to make Google’s contextual ads, AdSense, more behaviorally relevant to the user based on Google Toolbar data. Of course, this […]
In the past, searches involving for “stop words” — prepositions, pronouns, articles, and other small words like “be” or “to” — would return a warning saying that these words were “a very common word and were not included in your search.” Now, searches involving stop words no longer do this. Here is a before and […]
Robots reading cereal boxes in the supermarket? Googlebot at the art museum? Street signs and building addresses snatched from Street View images for local search, image search, and product search? Three new patent applications published at the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office this week explore the intricacies of reading text in images taken from Google’s […]
Google’s 10 Oddest Patents by Bill Slawski shares with us some of Google’s weirdest patent applications and patents. Here is a short rundown. Bill goes in more detail in his write up.
Friday, a Google patent application filing named Text message payment was posted at the US Patent & Trademark Office site. The patent described how “GPay” can be used to make payment via text messages. An example of how Gpay can be used includes mostly offline scenarios such as paying for items in vending machines or […]
Until very recently, you might have seen a label next to a search result in Google that indicated it was a “supplemental” result. A couple of patents from Google, one of which was granted this week and one from earlier this year, discuss how a search query might return results from an extended database that […]
Local search destination Local.com, which recently announced two local and mobile search patents, has acquired PremierGuide for approximately $2 million. PremierGuide is a white label provider of local search functionality and listings to third party publisher sites (newspapers and local TV affiliates) and has a large roster of clients. I have some additional detail on […]
A flurry of recently granted patents is starting to cloud the local search space. After being granted a patent for location-based search, Local.com this morning announced the awarding of another patent for an “ad supported 411 local search model.” Local.com’s stock shot up 52 percent on the announcement.
Google’s free directory assistance/voice search offering 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) has added a “map it” feature. Users can say “map it” after receiving the desired listing and get a text message with a link to a map (which opens a WAP browser). I tested the feature a couple of times , and it worked very easily.
I’ve got a patent, you’ve got a patent. It seems that nearly everyone running an Internet company has a patent nowadays. Local.com is the latest to announce a patent in the local space. The patent (no. 7,231,405), which I was unable to locate through a USPTO and Google Patents search, “covers local search technology related […]
USAToday writes about a recently awarded patent obtained by Jingle Networks, which operates the 1-800-Free411 ad-supported directory assistance service. After conducting several searches at the USPTO and elsewhere I was unable to find a copy of the patent itself. However, according to the article: Jingle’s patent, which it bought from inventor Scott Wolmuth, is for […]
Google may use games to analyse net users from The Guardian reports that Google is considering the idea of using gaming behavior to display targeted ads to that user. Privacy advocates are already voicing their distaste for the idea of gleaning information on users based on their gaming behaviors. To me, this is just like […]
One of the biggest stirs of 2005 in the search marketing field was caused by the release of a patent application from Google titled Information retrieval based on historical data. It introduced time as a dimension of ranking pages, with changes in content and linking and advertising and topics as factors to be considered, as […]
Google adds presentation software to Google Docs from Reuters has Google CEO Eric Schmidt confirming the rumors that Google will be rolling out presentation software within the Google Docs suite.
Google wins key ruling in patent dispute from BusinessWeek reports that the patent case against Google over Google Earth has now been closed. Google has won the dispute dating back to 2002, when it was filed by Skyline Software Systems against Keyhole, which Google later acquired and whose software became Google Earth. Skyline held a […]
Google returns results based upon content appearing upon individual pages, or at specific URLs. But that content could come from different authors, who have different levels of control over it. For example, a blog page may have posts written by more than one author, comments penned by others, and advertisements showing ads that even the […]
A wide range of newly published patent applications and granted patents, covering such ground as subscribed content in search results from Google; tag searching, detecting similar audio files, and simpler support vector machines from Yahoo; geographic based searching from MetaCarta; and data center architecture and smarter results to queries from Microsoft, amongst others…
Can indexing phrases from pages be an effective approach in identifying and filtering keyword stuffed pages, and honeypot pages aimed at attracting visitors solely to have them click upon ads? A new patent application published yesterday and assigned to Google, Detecting spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system, presents a reasonable argument in […]
Mobile search has its own rules, and if you want your pages indexed for people searching with handhelds, it may help to take a look at some of the patent applications that have come out lately from Microsoft and Google on the topic. Microsoft provided some details about what they are looking for in a […]
Some processes covered in patents granted last week by the US Patent and Trademark Office: Microsoft reranking results based upon redundancy of information, Ask reranking pages based upon affinities between searchers, Hewlett-Packard creating queries for searchers to investigate from scanned documents, and; Exalead forming dynamic query refinements from words found in documents located within search […]
Google has rolled out a new Google Patents search engine (Official Google Blog post here), allowing people to search across the full-text of US patents from 1790 through the middle of 2006. The company plans to update the service further with more 2006 filings and move to a weekly or better refresh schedule in the […]