Lin Tang

US Patent:

20130132357, May 23, 2013

Filed:

Nov 17, 2011

Appl. No.:

13/299089

Inventors:

TIMOTHY EDGAR - BELLEVUE WA, US
AMBARISH CHITNIS - REDMOND WA, US
RYEN WILLIAM WHITE - WOODINVILLE WA, US
PAVEL DMITRIEV - BELLEVUE WA, US
RAJANIKANTH AGEERU - BELLEVUE WA, US
OVIDIU DAN - BETHLEHEM PA, US
LIN TANG - BELLEVUE WA, US

Assignee:

MICROSOFT CORPORATION - REDMOND WA

International Classification:

G06F 17/30

US Classification:

707706, 707E17108

Abstract:

Embodiment described herein are generally directed to a toolbar extension of a web browser that grabs a user's search engine query and suggests a refined search query known to yield better search results. The toolbar recognizes the web page the user is on as being associated with a search engine and retrieves the user's search query. The toolbar interacts with a refinement component on a server, and the refinement component determines a refined search query based on confidence scores assigned to data mined from a data center affiliated with different search engine (one related to the toolbar). The refined search query is returned and displayed in a search field of the toolbar, allowing the user to easily run the refined search on the different search engine.

US Patent:

20130124496, May 16, 2013

Filed:

Nov 11, 2011

Appl. No.:

13/294707

Inventors:

TIMOTHY EDGAR - BELLEVUE WA, US
AMBARISH CHITNIS - REDMOND WA, US
RYEN WILLIAM WHITE - WOODINVILLE WA, US
PAVEL DMITRIEV - BELLEVUE WA, US
RAJANIKANTH AGEERU - BELLEVUE WA, US
OVIDIU DAN - BETHLEHEM PA, US
LIN TANG - BELLEVUE WA, US

Assignee:

MICROSOFT CORPORATION - REDMOND WA

International Classification:

G06F 17/30

US Classification:

707708, 707E17014, 707E17108, 707E17044

Abstract:

A toolbar extension of a web browser suggests a user try searching a different search engine than the one on which the user has just conducted a search. The toolbar detects the user is frustrated with the search results returned by the search engine by monitoring a number of session heuristics. Analyzing historical user session, log, and click data of other users who have submitted the search query to different search engines, a different search engine is selected that has historically generated better search results. A suggestion is then presented to the user to run the search query in the more effective search engine. Such a suggestion may be presented in a number of ways, but one embodiment displays a window next to the text field of the toolbar and provides a link to conduct a search for the search query in the more effective search engine.