Source: http://www.google.com/patents/US7962466?dq=6272333
Timestamp: 2017-03-29 06:32:52
Document Index: 339509926

Matched Legal Cases: ['Application No. 2007211160', 'Application No. 2007206022', 'Application No. 2007208181', 'Application No. 200780010330', 'Application No. 200780010282', 'Application No. 200780010292', 'Application No. 200780010299', 'Application No. 200780010330', 'Application No. 570644', 'Application No. 570640', 'Application No. 570643', 'Application No. 570671', 'Application No. 200780010292']

Patent US7962466 - Automated tool for human assisted mining and capturing of precise results - Google PatentsSearch Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »Sign inPatentsAn automated tool for human assisted analysis of search results for obtaining precise results responsive to a request. A single query entry triggers a search using one or more resources and results returned from the resources are displayed in a corresponding embedded renderer. A human provider analyzes...http://www.google.com/patents/US7962466?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US7962466 - Automated tool for human assisted mining and capturing of precise resultsAdvanced Patent SearchTry the new Google Patents, with machine-classified Google Scholar results, and Japanese and South Korean patents.Publication numberUS7962466 B2Publication typeGrantApplication numberUS 11/647,286Publication dateJun 14, 2011Filing dateDec 29, 2006Priority dateJan 23, 2006Fee statusPaidAlso published asCA2640093A1, EP1982278A2, EP1982278A4, US20070185843, US20110208712, WO2007087473A2, WO2007087473A3Publication number11647286, 647286, US 7962466 B2, US 7962466B2, US-B2-7962466, US7962466 B2, US7962466B2InventorsScott A. Jones, Thomas E. CooperOriginal AssigneeChacha Search, IncExport CitationBiBTeX, EndNote, RefManPatent Citations (117), Non-Patent Citations (90), Referenced by (13), Classifications (6), Legal Events (3) External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, EspacenetAutomated tool for human assisted mining and capturing of precise results
US 7962466 B2Abstract
This application is related to and claims the benefit of U.S. Application Serial No. 60/807,428, filed Jul. 14, 2006, inventor Scott A. Jones, et al., titled AUTOMATED TOOL FOR HUMAN ASSISTED MINING AND CAPTURING OF PRECISE RESULTS and is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/336,928, titled A SCALABLE SEARCH SYSTEM USING HUMAN SEARCHERS, inventor Scott A. Jones, filed Jan. 23, 2006, in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the disclosures of both of which are incorporated herein by reference.
A resource such as a search engine, e.g., Google®, Clusty®, Yahoo®, etc., may be utilized to submit a request for information that meets particular criteria and retrieve desired information from results returned in response to the request. Due to the vast amount of information available over the Internet, locating information using a search engine requires accurately formulating a query or a keyword(s) for a search requested. However, typical search engines fetch as many web pages as possible in which a requested keyword or query appears and generally require additional searching of the web pages to obtain desired information.
In situations where results returned from an initial search using a search engine do not produce desired information, subsequent searches using other search engine(s) may be performed. However, these subsequent searches require repeating the search and browsing through returned results to locate the desired information. While meta search engines such as Jux2™, Dogpile®, etc., query various search engines and return results from the search engines, all known meta search engines, Internet directories and other similar technologies provide comprehensive listing of web pages containing a requested keyword or query and require user to browse through results to obtain desired information. Typically additional searching of the results is required, especially when the desired information requires accessing a web page produced as a result of a search and running a process or routine made available via the web page such as converting a value, translating a word or sentence of one language into another, etc. to obtain the desired information.
A method and system are disclosed for passing a request to a resource, building a response based on a selection of a human provider from results returned from a search via the resource and delivering the response as a result of that request.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system for receiving requests and transmitting the requests to providers.
Reference will now be made in detail to the present embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to the like elements throughout. The embodiments are described below to explain the present invention by referring to the figures. It will nevertheless be understood that no limitation of the scope of the invention is thereby intended, such alterations and further modifications in the illustrated device, and such further applications of the principles of the invention as illustrated therein being contemplated as would normally occur to one skilled in the art to which the invention relates.
An automated tool for human assisted analysis of search results for obtaining precise result(s) as a response to a request is provided by the system illustrated in FIG. 1. A request is a query or keyword(s) submitted from an information seeker and may entail a fully-formed question, sentence, keyword or search phrase, for example, the closing time of a particular restaurant, the winner of the 1960 World Series, information pertaining to a medical illness, or any other type of query. A provider, a guide or paid searcher (PaidSearchers™) is a human searcher who has registered to handle requests, who may be a professional, an amateur and/or volunteer searcher. A requestor (InfoSeekers™) is a user or an entity submitting a request seeking information.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, the provider systems 30 a and 30 b are each provided with storage capability for locally maintaining information respectively using provider storage 32 connected with the provider system 30 a and storage 34 integrated with provider system 30 b. The provider storage 32 and provider system storage 34 may be used to retain information pertaining to requests received from the user devices 22 via the server 26 and responses to the requests. Storage functionality of the provider systems 30 a and 30 b is not limited to any particular configuration or recording media and may include any type of temporary or permanent storage technology that is useable to retain data. For example, a provider using the provider system 30 a may use a private storage accessible via the Internet (e.g., GoDaddy.com, Yahoo® storage, etc.), the provider storage 32, or any other device that can retain data retrievable at a later time.
When the server 26 receives a request from any of the user devices 22, the server 26 determines which provider(s) registered with the system 20 to handle requests that are currently available, match the request. Each provider may identify at least one category, subcategory, keyword, or area of interest pertaining to which the provider is willing to accept requests. For example, each available provider registered to handle requests pertaining to the category “health” may be identified and ranked against other providers registered for that category according to prior success in responding to requests to assign the request to top ranked available provider(s) within the category. Various types of conditions may be applied to determine provider(s) matching a request for optimizing responses from the provider(s). Further, any criteria discussed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/336,928, titled A SCALABLE SEARCH SYSTEM USING HUMAN SEARCHERS, inventor Scott A. Jones, filed Jan. 23, 2006 may be used.
The system database 28, among other things, stores previous queries (or a subset of previous queries, such as the ones that are still considered relevant to a particular user, wherein said relevance might pertain to time, location, or subject matter), corresponding categories, subcategories and/or keywords that resulted from the previous queries and accepted “relevant” results associated therewith.
A provider may sign up for multiple keywords in a query, (e.g. a provider might be signed up for both “baseball” and “world series”), then that greater-keyword provider may take priority over fewer-keyword provider candidates who are only signed up for a lesser number of matching keywords in the search query phrase (e.g. a provider or searcher who is signed up for either “baseball” or “world series” but not both).
If no provider is identified for a query phrase, then the server 26 can forward the query to “generalist searchers” who will attempt to answer queries in any category. Alternatively, the system 20 may shuttle the query to another search engine and/or meta-search engine in an attempt to provide the user with a base level of functionality that is never worse than that of other search engines. The results are passed back to the user. Also, the query may be passed to a system of experts who answer questions on a website such as Google™ Answers or Yahoo™ Answers, and the user may be given a pointer to the location of the query which may be answered in the future. These systems may not give the user real-time feedback, but the user may be informed that he can check back in the future.
An exemplary process 40 for human assisted information mining is illustrated in FIG. 2. As shown in FIG. 2, process 40 begins with receiving 42 a request. As previously discussed, a request may be any type of inquiry or keyword(s) for which a user (i.e., infoseeker™) is seeking specific or general information. For example, a user may submit a request to obtain the final score of the championship game of the 2006 NCAA Basketball Tournament, or general information pertaining to “diabetes.”
Subsequent to receiving 42 the request, process 40 continues by activating 44 resource(s). A provider, a searcher or a guide (i.e., PaidSearcher™) may use various types of tools to perform a search of publicly or privately available information to produce result(s) in response to the request. For example, the provider may use tools such as a browser to access public databases via searches over the World Wide Web, private databases that may be accessible only by the provider such as a database of information previously gathered by the provider, results stored based on previous requests, or from databases that require payment for access or even information available to the provider in non-electronic form, such as a book on the provider's bookshelf, test results from a personal experiment, knowledge base of the provider, etc. In addition, the provider may submit the request or some version of the request to an automated search tool such as Ask.com®, etc, or any other similar system able to respond to questions submitted in natural language. Alternatively, the provider systems 30 may copy the request, place the request into the search field of a search page for a particular search tool, for example, Yahoo®, and transmit the request to the search engines automatically.
The resource(s) activated 44 for seeking information related to a request may also be defined by the system 20 (FIG. 1) based on association of the provider handling the request with a category, keyword or area of interest, resources used by other providers, content of the request, or any other criteria that increases the probability of obtaining an accurate result responsive to the request. For example, a provider registered to handle requests pertaining to the keyword “basketball” may be presented with default resource(s) such as NCAAsports.com, ESPN.com, etc., while another provider handling requests pertaining to the keyword “health” may be provided with WEBMD.com, NIH.gov, etc. Similarly, based on usage of a resource among provider(s) handling requests of a particular keyword (or category), all the provider(s) may be presented with the resource as a default for seeking information pertaining to requests related to the category. In the same manner, a provider may also configure default resource(s) to be used from which that particular provider seeks information for a request. Providers who are associated with the same keyword or category may, in some embodiments, choose to activate different sets of resources. That is, the system 20 (FIG. 1) may be configured to allow provider(s) to flexibly activate resource(s) or may be configured to predetermine particular resource(s) which the provider(s) can activate. Activation of resource(s) for seeking information related to a request is explained in detail below with respect to FIGS. 3, 7 and 9.
When obtaining 46 information from results of the search(es), a provider analyzes the information content of the results returned from the search(es) to identify pertinent information in relation to the request. The obtained information may be a text based answer and may include a specific answer, comments from the provider, web pages, web links, images, videos, a document, audio recordings or any other request related information acquired by the provider in response to the request. Typically, the information obtained is what the provider may intend to satisfy the needs of the requesting user. For example, the obtained information may be operation hours of a particular type of restaurant in Indiana and may include a web page of the restaurant, advertisements referring to the restaurant, information of other similar restaurants in Indiana, etc. Similarly, in response to the request inquiring the final score of the championship game of the 2006 NCAA Basketball Tournament, the provider may obtain “73-57”, “Florida defeated UCLA 73-57”, etc.
An exemplary embodiment of a search interface 50 for activating one or more resources to seek information in response to a request is illustrated in FIG. 3. As shown in FIG. 3, a window or frame 52 includes resource windows 54, 56 and 58 configured to display contents produced from a search using MSN®, Yahoo®, Google® search engines, respectively. The “renderer” renders the results in each of the resource windows 54, 56 and 58. The resource windows 54, 56 and 58 display results (search engine results) from each of the resources so that a provider is able to compare, contrast, modify and select from the results to prepare a response to a request. The window 52 may include N number of renderers using which the provider browses results of activated resource(s). For example, each of the resource windows 54, 56 and 58 may be an HTML renderer for displaying web pages resulting from a search using the MSN®, Yahoo® and Google® search engines, respectively. The resource windows 54, 56 and 58 may display information including text, images, links, videos, HTML, XML, XHTML, cascading style sheets, Java Script, etc., or other electronic data available over the Internet and/or from a local network.
The provider systems 30 may be implemented as a browser-based thin client that allows all of the significant processing, data flow, various information source connections, and data manipulation to occur at the server 26 (FIG. 1). However, preferably, the provider systems 30 are implemented via a locally dynamic application that might run standalone or might run in the context of a browser. There are many examples of locally dynamic applications that do significant processing on the client side (in this case, provider systems 30) while relying on data structures that exist on a server (in this case, the server 26 connected to the system database 28). Some examples of locally dynamic applications include Google Earth (web-based mapping software), implemented using AJAX (Asynchronous Java combined with XML), and Basecamp (web-based project management software), implemented using “Ruby on Rails”.
A provider may activate any of the resource windows 54, 56 and 58 and thereby pass the request to the resources (e.g., search sites) using selection boxes 54 a, 56 a and 58 a, respectively. The selection boxes 54 a, 56 a and 58 a indicate (i.e., via checkmark) resource(s) that are currently activated. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 3, selection boxes 54 aand 56 a contain a checkmark indicating that the MSN® and Yahoo® search engines are activated while the lack of a checkmark in the selection box 58 a indicates that the Google® search engine is not activated. For ease of explanation, FIG. 3 shows an instance where the provider has three resources of which two are activated, however, the present invention is not limited to any particular number of resources from which a provider can select for activation. For example, a provider may be provided with multiple HTML renderers to correspond to various search engines, Internet directories such as Yahoo!® Directory, Open Directory Project (DMOZ), etc., and other resources available to the provider. Other resources may be easily tapped by clicking on a resource link provided which fires off a query string (as provided by the user originally and/or as modified by the provider) to that resource in a frame or window where the web page is rendered. Literally hundreds of resources may be associated with a keyword (perhaps submitted by peer providers in the system 20 (FIG. 1) and/or defined by a system administrator and/or by users of the system 20). All of the resources may be easily accessed via the search interface 50 or tool.
The window or frame 52 may include additional resources window 57 providing access to other resources defined for or associated with a category or keyword using selection boxes 57 a through 57 c. Access to the other resources may also be provided in the resources window 57 in a form of a link, URL, etc., pointing to the resources. For example, in addition to resources displayed in resource windows 54, 56 and 58, there might be other resources that are defined by other providers associated with a keyword that a particular provider may select from using selection boxes 57 a through 57 c. The provider may be restricted to selecting a finite number of resources to be displayed in the window 52. For example, a provider may select to use the Clusty® search engine to execute a search by clicking on selection box 57 a which causes a query submitted to the MSN® and Yahoo® search engines to be passed to Clusty® such that the provider is able to retrieve information or “drill-down” to relevant information from results returned.
An exemplary search interface 70 for displaying results from activated resources is illustrated in FIG. 4. As shown in FIG. 4, the search interface 70 includes a window 72 displaying search results from a search conducted using resources 54 b and 56 b, which in this case are MSN® and Yahoo® search engines, respectively. The window 72 includes search query entry field 76 enabling entry of keyword 74 to identify the object of the search, which may be modified as needed to trigger a new search by selecting button 78. For example, when the keyword 74 “health” is changed based on entry of a different query or keyword in the search query entry field 76, search results 82 acquired from resource 54 b (MSN®) and search results 84 acquired from resource 56 b (Yahoo!®) are changed to reflect results for the different query or keyword.
Another exemplary search interface 90 displaying multiple resources is illustrated in FIG. 5. As shown in FIG. 5, the search interface 90 includes a window 72 a having activated resources 54 b, 56 b and 94. The resources 94 includes resource windows 94 a through 94 f rendering information of A9®, Answers, OpenDirectory, Amazon®, WebMD® and Mamma™ which are activated in conjunction with resources 54 b and 56 b for executing a search in relation to the keyword 74 “health.” The resource windows 94 a through 94 f include buttons 92 a through 92 f using which the resource windows 94 a through 94 f may be conventionally displayed more fully (restored). For example, button 56 c may be used to minimize search result 84 rendered via the resource window 56 b, while buttons 54 c and 92 a through 92 f may be used to restore the resource windows 54 b and 94 a through 94 f, respectively, to display the search results.
While the majority of the resource windows 54 b, 56 b and 94 shown in FIG. 5 are search engines, resources used for seeking information in response to a request are not limited to search engines. For example, resource 94 c DMOZ and/or other web directories as well as commercial or informational web sites like Amazon® 94 d and WebMD® 94 e may be used to conduct a search. The provider may also obtain information from private databases and other sources accessible to the provider to search for information to respond to a request. Further, the window 72 a includes GUI elements 62, 64, 66, 68, 69 a and 69 b to adjust viewing of information contained in the resource 54 b, 56 b and 94.
The search interface 100 includes a next button 106 and a previous button 108 for conventionally navigating through information resulting from a single resource or multiple resources. For example, the next and previous buttons 106 and 108 may be used to navigate through web page contents resulting from a search of Yahoo® and/or switch between navigating from web page contents of Yahoo® and MSN®. The next button 106, the previous button 108 and the close button 110 may be similar to typical graphical user interfaces of application programs that provide navigational capabilities.
The search interface 100 may include a URL, a link, etc., identifying a location of a result. For example, as shown in FIG. 6, URL 104 of results 116 obtained from Yahoo® may be indicated as the provider seeks information in response to the request or pages through the results using the next button 106. The URL identifying a location of obtained information may also be provided in a response to a user (InfoSeeker™). The URL may include an index to a particular location within a web page where the relevant information and surrounding text (referred to herein as a “snippet”) is located when the HTML on the page includes tags with this information. In such cases, when the provider obtains information from a particular location on a web page, a corresponding index page tab is identified and provided with the URL to direct a recipient to the location of the obtained information within the page. For example, if a particular bit of pertinent information from a particular web page is located at the bottom of a web page and the provider had to scroll to the bottom of the web page to obtain information, the provider may forward the URL of the web page including an index to allow the recipient to view the information on the bottom of the web page without having to scroll to locate the information. This means that the InfoSeeker™ is able to quickly view the pertinent information on the web page found by the provider with minimal scrolling, even on a small display screen, such as a mobile phone.
As shown in FIG. 6, the result 116 from a resource includes an answer 112 included in related context (or snippet) 114 a and 114 b. For example, when a user asks what “NCAA” stands for, a provider executes the search using, e.g., pre-configured resource(s), obtains the answer “National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)” and may include surrounding text or related context of the answer. The context 114 may include text (or graphics) related to the answer 112 or may simply be text adjacent to the answer 112. The answer 112 and the context 114 may be text including comments from the provider, web pages, links, images, videos, audio recordings or any other information that may be transmitted to a requesting user from the provider as a response to a request.
In a preferred embodiment, the “answer” 112 is displayed with a different display mode than the context 114 to allow the provider to distinguish between information containing the query or keyword of a request and context information. For example, the answer 112 may be highlighted with a different color than the block of text containing the context 114 a and 114 b. The provider may use various conventional ways to select the answer 112 and the context 114 from the results 116 in building the response to the request, such as dragging a cursor over selected content and selecting add button 120, single clicking over what the provider wants to return as the answer 112 and double clicking over the context 114, blocking/copying, etc. The results 116 may include images, videos, a document, audio recordings or any other information that may be included by a provider in a response obtained for the request.
When the provider selects information from the results 116, the selected information content may be displayed in an entry field 118 containing information to be included in a response to the request upon selection of the add button 120. For example, the provider double clicks on the answer 112 “National Collegiate Athletic Association” which causes the snippet 114 including answer 112 to appear in the entry field 118 and clicks on the add button 120 to build a response for a request seeking information on “NCAA.” Alternatively, the answer 112 may be selected from the resource by double clicking on a word, selecting a phrase by dragging the mouse over word(s), selecting the word(s) by moving the cursor to the location in the page and pressing the shift-key while continuing to move over the words, etc.
An exemplary user interface 200 enabling selection from available resources is shown in FIG. 7. As shown in FIG. 7, for query or keyword(s) 74 b of “prostate cancer”, a set of resources 202 including mayoclinic.com 202 a, NIH.gov 202 b, WebMD.com 202 c, Google.com 202 d and Yahoo.com 202 e are available for selection. Availability of a resource may be determined based on a variety of criteria such as usage of the resource by other providers registered to handle requests pertaining to the same or similar category, popularity of a resource among all providers, reliability of a resource in returning pertinent results, etc. It is also possible to have different sets of resources for different keywords or categories for which a provider is registered.
Accordingly, when a search is conducted for the keyword(s) 74 b of “prostate cancer” using activated resources 202 a, 202 b and 202 c, search result renderers 212, 214 and 216 are provided, respectively. The search result renderer 212 contains results of mayoclinic.com for the keyword(s) 74 b while search result renderers 214 and 216 contain results of NIH.gov and WebMD for the keyword(s) 74 b, respectively. For example, Appendix A incorporated herein by reference illustrates results returned for a search conducted using the keyword(s) 74 b of “prostate cancer” via resource 202 a and Appendices B and C also incorporated herein by reference illustrate results returned for a search conducted via resources 202 b and 202 c for the keyword(s) 74 b. As such, any additional searching that would have been required for an information seeker to obtain desired information pertaining to the keyword(s) 74 b would be eliminated because the provider analyzes the returned results and captures accurate information to present to the information seeker.
FIG. 8 illustrates process 220 for sending a query to activated resource(s). As shown in FIG. 8, process 220 begins with determining whether search query of interface is activated 222. The search query interface is activated 222, for example, when a user (infoseeker™) using one of the user devices 22 (FIG. 1) submits a query to trigger a search. When it is determined that the search query interface is not activated 222, process 220 ends 224. On the other hand, upon determining that the search query interface is activated 222, content of query field is obtained 226.
After obtaining 226 content of the query field, process 222 moves to setting 228 N=1. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 3, two resources such as MSN® and Yahoo® may be activated by a provider for executing a search for a particular query submitted by a requestor. After setting 228 the number of resources, process 220 moves to accessing 230 resource list Nth resource. For example, five resources may be activated for a search pertaining to the category “soccer”, in which case, process 220 goes through the list of resources and checks active 234 status of each resource and incrementing N (232) if the resource is inactive. Process 220 continues to sending 236 query “soccer” to active 234 resource(s) and extracting 238 results from the activated resource(s).
Subsequent to extracting 238 results from the activated resources, process 220 continues to copying 242 results to interface window for resource #N. For example, results returned from a search using Mayoclinic.com as a resource in response to a query pertaining to “prostate cancer” are copied to interface window. How resources are listed or presented to a provider and how results are returned from selected resources are displayed is explained in detail below with respect to FIG. 9.
FIG. 9 illustrates an interface 300 for conducting a search using selected resources and mining through results of the resources. As shown in FIG. 9, main search query page 302 includes an input field 302 a for entering a query or search request and a button 302 b for submitting the query to execute a search. Upon submission of the query for the search, the provider will be presented with a list of resources 304 to which the query may be passed for the search. The list of resources 304 presented to the provider may be predefined in accordance with the query or keyword(s) in a request, a provider's preferences, use by other providers, or any other criteria that increases the probability of obtaining a precise result. For example, when the most frequently used resources for conducting a search in relation to the category prostate cancer are the Mayoclinic, NIH, WebMD web pages, these resources are automatically presented to the provider when a query directed to “prostate cancer” received by server 26 (FIG. 1).
In addition, providers may configure resources associated with each keyword that the providers have signed up to handle. For example, a provider may edit a list of resources presented to the provider based on association of the provider with a particular keyword or category by activating or de-activating any of the resources in the list. In addition, a provider may add resources for use by the provider, share resource(s) with other providers who have signed up for a particular keyword or category and/or share the resource(s) with users who are not using services of a provider, etc. The system 20 (FIG. 1) may have a default set of resources for a given keyword when a provider signs up for that keyword, however, the provider may configure resource(s) that may automatically be displayed in frames or resource windows to suit the provider's needs. The resource(s) may be selected to automatically send a user's query to each selected resource(s). In addition, a provider may view a list of non-automatic resources, which the provider may select in real-time, for example, by clicking on the resource(s), at which point the query is sent off to the selected resource(s) such that results may be returned to the provider who may then choose to forward information to the user (or lnfoseeker™).
FIG. 10 illustrates a GUI 400 for extracting an answer pertaining to a query. As shown in FIG. 10, a window 402 contains results 408 from a resource and a URL 404 indicating the location of the resource. The window 402 displays different portions of the results (denoted 408 a, 408 b and 408 c) 408 from the particular resource with different characteristics (boxed text in this case) and enables the provider to select therefrom to be returned as an answer to a request. The provider may also be presented with pre-selected section(s) of the results 408 (indicated by dashed lines) produced from a search via the resource. For example, the query “prostate cancer” may be highlighted by indicator b and any information surrounding the query may be displayed with a different marker such as indicators a and c.
The provider is able to modify the indicators a, b and c to contain different portions of the results 408 and select the add button 406 to add the selected portion to a response to be presented. When the provider wants a different result, the provider may select previous and next buttons provided in the window 402. As such, the provider is able to capture a precise result and provide the result as a response to a request. For example, the keywords “prostate cancer” contained in a query which is the target string in this case may be identified with 408 b bracketed with context before 408 a and context after 408 c. FIG. 11 illustrates a GUI 500 for browsing through results from a resource and capturing an exact answer. The GUI 500 includes a window 501 displaying results 508 for a query submitted in a field 502 and a response compiling window 506 for selectively building information to be provided as a response to a request. For example, the results 508 are generated for the query in the field 502 which requests conversion value of 98° Fahrenheit to Celsius in accordance with a search conducted using a resource. The provider is able to analyze the results and select information from the results 508 that the provider thinks qualifies as a response to the request. For example, when the provider analyzes the results 508 and selects a result 504 from a particular resource, the response compiling window 506 is presented to the provider using which the provider builds the response including by modifying contents to be delivered as the response to the request.
As illustrated in FIG. 11, the response compiling window 506 may include exact answer frame 506 a for providing a direct or precise answer, description frame 506 b for presenting context information related to the answer and URL/page locator frame 506 c identifying a location of contents in the response compiling window 506. For example, a direct answer to the query requesting conversion value of 98° Fahrenheit to Celsius may be 36.66 . . . degrees Celsius, the description frame may be the rate of conversion and the URL/Page locator may point to a web page containing a converter.
As illustrated in FIG. 11, a result 504 one of the resources may be selected, for example, by clicking on a link 504 a of the resource which allows a provider to access and locate (“drill down”) content of the resource where an answer can be calculated perhaps with the provider's entry into a conversion table. Then, when there is content (generated dynamically), the content can be captured and transferred to the user. However, the dynamic web content is copied to a known storage site accessible to the provider (e.g., GoDaddy.com, Yahoo® storage, etc.). In addition to returning a pointer to the copied data, a URL 506 c pointing to the resource where the calculation can be performed may also be returned. Even though the answer may be dynamically generated, the answer 506 a is presented to the embedded browser as HTML content. The window 501 may be enabled by a provider application that allows the provider to select any content from a web page (even that generated in forms, etc.) as the answer to a query. As explained above with respect to FIG. 10, selecting text from a web page generates the snippet and causes the title of the page and the associated URL to be captured as part of the result. The result line presented will contain the generated result and may direct the user to the web site where the user may use the interface to do other conversions.
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