{
  "patent_number": "US 8615514",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Google Uses User Feedback to Rank Websites by Quality",
  "original_title": "Evaluating website properties by partitioning user feedback",
  "summary": "A method for Google to judge a website's quality by looking at how users interact with its search results across different categories of search queries.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent describes a way to measure the quality of a website by grouping search data into specific buckets. It takes pairs of documents and the queries that led people to them, then sorts these pairs into partitions based on how well the document matched the query. By looking at how users click on results within these different buckets, the system calculates a 'skew' or statistical distribution of feedback. If a website performs unexpectedly across these partitions, it indicates a specific level of quality, which is then used as a signal to rank that website higher or lower in future search results.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover ranking websites based on simple, non-partitioned metrics like total click count alone.",
    "Does not cover manual human review of websites for quality assessment.",
    "Does not cover ranking methods that ignore the relationship between the query and the specific document retrieved.",
    "Does not cover systems that do not use statistical skew as a primary indicator of quality."
  ],
  "filed": "2010-02-03",
  "granted": "2013-12-24",
  "expires": "2030-02-03",
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Google LLC",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/google-llc",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Michael Flaster",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/michael-flaster"
    },
    {
      "name": "Neil C. Fernandes",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/neil-c-fernandes"
    },
    {
      "name": "April R. Lehman",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/april-r-lehman"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 26,
  "tags": [
    "software",
    "ai_ml",
    "ecommerce"
  ],
  "abstract": "Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for evaluating website properties by partitioning user feedback data are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a plurality of document query pairs (D-Qs) associated with a website, partitioning the plurality of D-Qs into one or more groups according to values for a partition parameter associated with the plurality of D-Qs, evaluating a property parameter of the website based on aggregated user feedback data of the D-Qs included within at least one of the one or more groups, and providing the evaluated property parameter as an input for ranking documents from the website as result documents for searches.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/8615514/evaluating-website-properties-by-partitioning-user-feedback",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/8615514/evaluating-website-properties-by-partitioning-user-feedback/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US8615514",
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}