Search engine system supporting inclusion of unformatted search string after domain name portion of URL

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/792,405, filed Mar. 3, 2004 now abandoned, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to user interfaces and methods for submitting search queries to web-based search engines.

2. Description of the Related Art

Numerous web sites exist that provide search engines for allowing users to conduct searches of the World Wide Web and other repositories of content. Typically, a user conducts a search by retrieving a search page of a web site, entering a search string into a search box, and then selecting a button for submitting the search string as a search query or request. The search string may be a search phrase in which individual terms are separated by spaces, or may consist of a single search term. The results of the search query are provided to the user on one or more search results pages.

Some search engine sites support the ability for a user to submit a search query by encoding the search string within a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Typically, however, the user must encode the search string in the URL using special formatting that is inconvenient or unnatural for users to type. For example, in some cases, users must add a special string such as “query=” to indicate that a search is being requested, and/or must add special characters to the search string itself. As one example, the URL www.google.com/search?q=mars%20rover may be used to the search for “mars rover.”

The present invention addresses this and other problems by providing a web site system that includes functionality for searching a repository of information, such as the World Wide Web, by including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting. The search string may consist of a single search term, or a plurality of search terms separated by spaces. For example, a user wishing to search for “San Francisco Hotels” may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system. The system may also support the use of Boolean operators and/or other types of operators within the search strings.

In one embodiment, when the system receives a request for a URL of the form www.domain_name/char_string, where char_string is a character string that may include spaces and non-alphabetic characters, the system initially determines whether the character string includes a prefix that identifies the URL as a non-search-request URL. If no such prefix is present, the character string is used in its entirety as a search string to execute a search, and the results of the search are returned to the user. Otherwise, the URL request is processed as a non-search-request URL by, for example, retrieving a static web page or other object from a subdirectory.

Neither this summary nor the following detailed description purports to define the invention. The invention is defined by the claims.

FIG. 1 illustrates a method for processing URL requests in accordance with one embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2 illustrates one example of a set of components that may be used to implement the invention.

Specific embodiments of the invention will now be described with reference to the drawings. These embodiments are intended to illustrate, and not limit, the invention. The scope of the invention is defined by the claims.

FIG. 1 illustrates a method by which URL request messages from users are processed in a preferred embodiment of the invention. As described below, the method depicted in FIG. 1 may be implemented within software that runs on one or more servers that process request messages from web clients.

As depicted by block 10 , a URL request message, such as an HTTP message of the form GET URL, is initially received from user/web client. The URL included in this request message is of the form www.domain_name/char_string, where domain_name is a domain name of a web site system to which the requested is directed (e.g., “a9.com”), “/” is a separator character, and char_string is a character string that may or may not be a search string. The character string may include spaces, slashes, hyphens, and other types of non-alphabetic characters. Although a forward slash is used in this embodiment, a different separator character, such as a question mark, may alternatively be used.

As depicted by block 12 , the URL is initially processed by determining whether char_string starts with a predefined prefix, such as the two-character prefix “-/”, that is used to distinguish search request URLs from non-search-request URLs. The prefix may have any desired length, such as one, two, three, or four characters. A prefix that is not likely to appear within search strings submitted by users is preferably used.

As depicted by block 14 , if char_string does not start with the predefined prefix, char_string is treated in its entirely as a search string for performing a search. For example, if the URL is www.a9.com/San Francisco Hotels, the string “San Francisco Hotels” would be used as a search string (and more specifically, a keyword phrase) for performing a search. In a preferred embodiment, the searches are executed as web searches to locate web pages and other types of documents on the World Wide Web. In other embodiments, the searches may additionally or alternatively be directed to another type of content repository, such as, for example, a database of published literature, a database or electronic catalog of products, or a database of online auctions. As depicted by block 16 , the results of the search are incorporated into a search results page, which is returned to the user/web client that submitted the request.

Although not depicted in FIG. 1 , a user may also perform a search by submitting a search string from a conventional search page, which may be retrieved by requesting a URL of the form www.domain_name or www.domain_name/.

If char_string starts with the predefined prefix, the URL is treated as a non-search-request URL. In this scenario (shown in block 18 ), char_string is treated as a further reference to a directory or object in this scenario, and not as a search string. For example, if a prefix of “-/” is used, the URL www.a9.com/-/index.htm would be treated as a request for the web page at this address, while the URL www.a9.com/index.htm would be treated as a request to search the World Wide Web for “index.htm.” Although only a single prefix is needed, two or more different prefixes (e.g., both “-/” and “/-”) may be recognized by the system as signifying the user's intent not to use char_string as search string. The web page or other object referenced by the non-search-request URL is returned to the user/web client in block 20 .

An important benefit of the method shown in FIG. 1 is that users can add their search strings to the web site's base URL without the addition of any special characters to indicate an intent to conduct a search. For instance, a user wishing to search the web for “NFL scores” can just request the URL “www.a9.com/NFL scores”. Another benefit is that users can use spaces to separate search terms, as is currently the convention for entering search strings on Internet search pages. An additional benefit is that the search string may appear at the very end of the URL.

As will be recognized, various modifications can be made to the method shown in FIG. 1 . One such modification is to treat all URLs of the format www.domain_name/char_string as search request URLs. If this approach is used, a subdomain (e.g., www.pages.a9.com) may be provided for accessing other content of the web site. Another variation is to treat certain URLs that lack the full prefix as search requests if such URLs are otherwise invalid. For example, assuming “-/” is used as the only valid prefix, a request for www.a9.com//text may be treated as a request to search for “text” if the URL does not point to a valid subdirectory or object.

Another variation is to use a suffix, rather than a prefix, to identify non-search-request URLs. For instance, a URL of the format www.domain_name/char_string may be treated as a non-search-request URL if and only if char_string ends with a predefined suffix such as “/-” or “/-/”.

FIG. 2 illustrates components of a web site system 30 in which the invention may be embodied. The system includes a web server 32 that processes request messages received over the Internet from user computing devices 34 , each of which runs a web browser or other web client program. The user computing devices 34 may include, for example, personal computers (PCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular telephones, and other types of devices that support web browsing.

The web server 32 includes, or runs in conjunction with, a local director component 36 that is responsible for decoding URL requests as depicted in FIG. 1 to evaluate whether each such request should be treated as a search request. In one embodiment, the local director 36 operates by analyzing each URL request according to a set of rules, and by passing URLs or URL parameters to specific physical servers or services based on the results of this analysis.

When a search request URL is received (e.g., www.a9.com/char_string, where char_string does not start with the predefined prefix), the web server/local director passes the URL, or the search string portion of the URL, to a query server 40 for processing. The query server 40 applies the search string to an index of web pages and/or other content 42 to execute the search request. In one embodiment, this task is performed by treating each term in the search string, except for noise words such as “and,” “a,” and “the,” as a keyword. In another embodiment, the search string may include one or more groups of words (which may be demarcated using quotations), and may include Boolean operators (e.g., AND, OR and NOT) and/or other operators (e.g., +, −, parenthesis, and NEAR); if no quotations or operators are present, each term, excluding any noise words, may be treated as a keyword. The results of the search are returned to the web server 32 , which incorporates some or all of the matching items into a search results page.

When a non-search-request URL is received, such as the URL www.a9.com/-/jobs.htm, the web server/local director preferably uses the URL to access a repository 46 in which content is arranged within a directory structure. This may involve passing the URL to a separate server or service responsible for retrieving or generating the content, depending upon the type of content being requested (e.g., static versus dynamic web page).

Although this invention has been described in terms of certain preferred embodiments and applications, other embodiments and applications that are apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, including embodiments which do not provide all of the features and advantages set forth herein, are also within the scope of this invention. Accordingly, the scope of the present invention is defined only by the appended claims.