Computerized system and method for automatically generating and providing interactive query suggestions within an electronic mail system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2018196822-A1
Application number	US-201715402391-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jan 10, 2017
Priority date	Jan 10, 2017
Publication date	Jul 12, 2018
Grant date	—

Abstract

Disclosed are systems and methods for improving interactions with and between computers in content searching, generating, hosting and/or providing systems supported by or configured with personal computing devices, servers and/or platforms. The systems interact to identify and retrieve data within or across platforms, which can be used to improve the quality of data used in processing interactions between or among processors in such systems. The disclosed systems and methods automatically generate and provide an interactive rich set of personalized query suggestions within a unified framework. The disclosed systems and methods are able to integrate attributes associated with message data and metadata by transforming such attributes into facets that are combined with term suggestions and presented to the user in a unified manner. The instant disclosure provides an interactive search suggestion mechanism that narrows the search as the user interacts with the dynamically generated and provided suggestions.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A method comprising:
receiving, at a computing device, a first search query for a search of an inbox of a user, said search query comprising a character string; searching, via the computing device, a collection of messages within the inbox based on the first search query, said searching comprising analyzing said collection of messages and identifying, based on said analysis, a first set of messages, said first set of messages comprising information that includes said character string; upon identifying said first set of messages, automatically analyzing, via the computing device, each message in said first set of messages, said analysis comprising parsing each message and, based on said parsing, identifying attributes of each message; automatically generating, via the computing device based on the identification of the attributes for each message in said first set of messages, a set of facets, said facet generation comprising analyzing each attribute, determining a type of each attribute based on the analysis, and creating a data item for each attribute type, said set of facets representing said created data items; analyzing, via the computing device, information associated with messages in the inbox based on the search query and said set of facets, said analysis comprising determining a set of terms that are associated with each facet in the set of facets; determining, via the computing device, a set of search suggestions based on the set of terms and the set of facets, said search suggestion determination comprising combining said terms in said set of terms with said facets in said set of facets to create each of the search suggestions, said set of search suggestions organized such that individual subsets of said search suggestions making up the entire set of search suggestions are associated with an individual facet of said facet set; determining, via the computing device, a measurement value for each search suggestion, and based on said determination, ranking each search suggestion; and automatically causing display of said ranked search suggestions, via the computing device, on a display of a device of the user, said caused display resulting in a user interface associated with the inbox being modified to display the ranked search suggestions.

2 . The method of claim 1 , where said determination of the set of terms is based on a search of messages in said user's inbox.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said determination of the set of terms is based on a search of a query log of said user for said inbox.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, from the user device, a selection of a displayed search suggestion.

5 . The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
creating a second search query, said second search query comprising said first search query and said selected search suggestion; searching the collection of messages based the second search query and identifying a second set of messages comprising information that includes said character string and characters of said selected search suggestion; automatically analyzing each message in said second set of messages and identifying attributes of each message; automatically generating, based on the identification of the attributes for each message in said second set of messages, a second set of facets representing created data items comprising information associated with a type of attribute of each second message; analyzing information associated with messages in the inbox based on the second search query and said second set of facets, said analysis comprising determining a second set of terms; determining a second set of search suggestions, said second search suggestion determination comprising combining the terms in said second set of terms with said facets in said second set of facets to create each of the second search suggestions, said second set of search suggestions organized such that individual subsets of said second search suggestions making up the entire set of second search suggestions are associated with an individual facet of said second facet set; determining a measurement value for each second search suggestion, and based on said determination, ranking each second search suggestion; and automatically causing display of said second ranked search suggestions on the display of the user device, said caused display resulting in the user interface being automatically updated to display said second ranked search suggestions.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said measurement value comprises a value determined according to a measurement selected from a group consisting of: an amount of messages in said inbox, frequency of said search query appearing in said messages, relevance to the search term, freshness, and information gain.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said attributes comprise information selected from a group consisting of: an identity of a sender or recipient of a message, message content in the message, a time of the message, where it was sent from, where it was received, data indicating whether there was an attachment and what type of attachment it is, data indicating what rules the message is subject to, and user activity on the message.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said determination of the set of search suggestions further comprises:
determining an allocation of which terms in said set of terms correspond to each facet in said set of facets, said determined terms being the respective subset of suggestions organized according to said facet set; and updating, based on the determination of term allocation, said facet data items with information associated with said set of terms, wherein said search suggestions comprise information associated with said updated facet data items.

9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein said ranking of said terms for each facet comprises ordering each allocated term according to the determined measurement value for each term.

10 . The method of claim 8 , wherein said ranking comprises:
determining an aggregate score for each facet based on a aggregation of the measurement value for each term associated with a facet; and ranking each facet according to the determined aggregate score, wherein said caused display of said ranked search suggestions is further based on the aggregate scoring of the facets.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said computing device is a messaging server.

12 . The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
causing display of a set of messages based on the selected search suggestion on said user interface of the inbox.

13 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining a context of the search suggestions; causing communication, over the network, of said context to an advertisement platform to obtain a digital content item comprising digital advertisement content associated with said context; receiving, over the network, said digital content item; and causing display said digital content item on said user interface.

14 . A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium tangibly encoded with computer-executable instructions, that when executed by a processor associated with a computing device, performs a method comprising:
receiving, at the computing device, a first search query for a search of an inbox of a user, said search query comprising a character string; searching, via the computing device, a collection of messages within the inbox based on the first search query, said searching comprising analyzing said collection of messages and identifying, based on said analysis, a first set of messages

Assignees

• Yahoo Inc

Inventors

• Lewin-Eytan Liane
• Carmel David
• Raviv Ariel
• Libov Alexander
• Maarek Yoelle
• Monaco Peter

Classifications

• G06F16/3322

  using system suggestions (G06F16/3325 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06Q10/107 Primary

  Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing] · CPC title

• G06F16/90324 Primary

  using system suggestions · CPC title

• G06F17/3097 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/3053

  Physics · mapped topic