Patent Document ID: 8032535
Application ID: 12427656

Base Claim:
1. A computer implemented method for providing personalized search ranking, the method comprising: receiving a query from a user terminal including a query word; identifying first and second search results relevant to the query, wherein the first search result has a first result word and the second search result has a second result word; combining the query and the first and second search results to obtain a set of symbol pairs, wherein a first symbol pair contains the query word and the first result word and a second symbol pair contains the query word and the second result word; accessing a data storage device for weights for symbol pairs which were stored during a previous search; determining an estimate of relevance for each search result with the weights; ranking the search results according to their estimates of relevance; displaying the search results according to their ranks; detecting browsing activities on the search results; updating the weights when a search result is clicked on and storing the updated weights in the data storage device; updating the estimates of relevance with the updated weights; and reordering the search results according to the updated estimates of relevance; wherein the method is performed by one or more computer systems.

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Claim 4:
4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: storing in the data storage device a user profile with information selected from the group consisting of: the user's demographic information, one or more query words the user entered before, one or more results the user clicked on before, and weights for symbol pairs obtained in the user's previous searches.