Patent Document ID: 9754210
Application ID: 14242576

Base Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method for determining user interests, comprising: receiving user activity data that describes an interaction between a user and digital content; generating first interest-level data that represents a first level of interest between said user and a first entity and a second entity that are a topic of said digital content, wherein said first entity and said second entity are included within a knowledge base comprising a plurality of entities, said knowledge base comprising an ontology comprising a knowledge graph that indicates relationships between said plurality of entities; identifying a candidate entity based on said candidate entity having a relationship to both the first entity and the second entity within the knowledge base; generating second interest-level data that represents a second level of interest between said user and said candidate entity based on an analysis of said relationships between the candidate entry and the first entity and the second entity; linking a user ID associated with the user to the candidate entity, thereby indicating the user is interested in the candidate entity; receiving a search query from the user; and generating a search result comprising digital contents, in response to the received search query, wherein the digital contents are ranked using the generated first interest-level data and the generated second interest-level data.

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Claim 3:
3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein said interaction between said user and said digital content involves a web browser; further, indicating a point in time when said first entity appeared as said topic in said digital content that said user interacted with; and pruning said first entity from said first interest level data after more than a threshold amount of time passes between the point in time and a present time.