Abstract: A method and system for identifying the importance of information areas of a display page. An importance system identifies information areas or blocks of a web page. A block of a web page represents an area of the web page that appears to relate to a similar topic. The importance system provides the characteristics or features of a block to an importance function that generates an indication of the importance of that block to its web page. The importance system “learns” the importance function by generating a model based on the features of blocks and the user-specified importance of those blocks. To learn the importance function, the importance system asks users to provide an indication of the importance of blocks of web pages in a collection of web pages.

Abstract: A method and system for generating wrappers for hierarchically organized documents by jointly optimizing template detection and wrapper generation is provided. A wrapper generation system generates a wrapper for documents with similar templates by identifying a cluster of document trees and generating a wrapper tree for the cluster. A wrapper tree defines the wrapper for documents that match the template of the cluster. The wrapper generation system clusters document trees by generating a wrapper tree for the cluster based on an initial document tree. The wrapper generation system then repeatedly determines whether any other document tree matches or nearly matches the wrapper tree for the cluster and, if so, adds the document tree to the cluster and adjusts the wrapper tree as appropriate so that all the document trees, including the newly added one, match the wrapper tree.

Abstract: A method and system for determining relevance of a document to a query based on identifier match distance is provided. The relevance system analyzes a training set of queries and documents to determine the relationship between identifier match distance and relevance of a document to a query. The identifier match distance indicates the distance from the end of an identifier of a document to an identifier term that matches a query term. The relevance system generates a prior relevance probability that a document with a certain identifier match distance is relevant to a query. The relevance system uses the prior relevance probabilities to determine relevance of documents to queries based on identifier match distance.

Abstract: A relevance system determines the relevance of a query term to a document based on spans within the document that contain the query term. The relevance system aggregates the relevance of the query terms into an overall relevance for the document. For each query term, the relevance system calculates a span relevance for each span that contains that query term. The relevance system then aggregates the span relevances for a query term into a query term relevance for that document. The relevance system may aggregate the query term relevances into a document relevance.

Abstract: Categorizing page block functionality to improve document layout for browsing is described. In one aspect, document content is analyzed with respect to multiple block function criteria. Results of this analysis are used to assign a respective block function to blocks of the document content. These block function assignments are used to generate one or more customized document layouts for browsing by a user.

Abstract: An information extraction model is trained on format features identified within labeled training documents. Information from a document is extracted by assigning labels to units based on format features of the units within the document. A begin label and end label are identified and the information is extracted between the begin label and the end label. The extracted information can be used in various document processing tasks such as ranking.

Abstract: A method and system for identifying the importance of information areas of a display page. An importance system identifies information areas or blocks of a web page. A block of a web page represents an area of the web page that appears to relate to a similar topic. The importance system provides the characteristics or features of a block to an importance function that generates an indication of the importance of that block to its web page. The importance system “learns” the importance function by generating a model based on the features of blocks and the user-specified importance of those blocks. To learn the importance function, the importance system asks users to provide an indication of the importance of blocks of web pages in a collection of web pages.