Patent ID: 8099406

Claim:
A method for human editing of information in search engine results, the method performed by a computer system having access to a database, the method comprising: receiving at the computer system a search query from a user; performing a search over a set of data in response to the search query, the set of data being at the computer system or accessible to the computer system; generating a set of result items returned from the search over the set of data; presenting the set of result items in conjunction with a method of using human edited information in search engine results comprising: wherein some of the result items in the set of result items have fields associated with them; wherein a field is a visible interface element; wherein at least one result item has a human edited information field, which is a field that is configured to contain human edited information; retrieving from the database human edited information for the at least one result item in the set of result items and loading it into the human edited information field of the at least one result item; displaying the set of result items and the human edited information for the at least one result item in a results document; receiving input from the user in the human edited information field of the at least one result item where the input is used to enter changes to, modify, or delete the human edited information for the at least one result item; wherein the human edited information for a result item is a shared annotation that is editable by other users via the human edited information field of the result item; wherein at least part of the input received from the user is stored in the database to be available for later use in presenting human edited information of a later set of result items returned in response to later search queries of later users.