Patents by Inventor Sanaz Ahari

Sanaz Ahari has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9858589
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus include computer programs encoded on a computer-readable storage medium for measuring lift. A method includes: receiving requests for content for which a first content item is an eligible content item; delivering the first content item along with a first pixel that identifies the delivery of the first content item to a first portion of the received requests; delivering a second, different content item along with a second pixel that identifies the non-delivery of the first content item to a second portion of the received plurality of requests rather than the first content item; evaluating searches performed by users that received the first content item as compared to users that received the second content item including using the first pixel and second pixel in evaluating search logs associated with search requests performed by users; and presenting lift data to a sponsor associated with the first content item.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 15, 2013
    Date of Patent: January 2, 2018
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Mehdi Sharifzadeh, Oren E. Zamir, Troy L. Walker, Dan Blandford, Radoslav M. Kirov, Jeff Bergman, Sanaz Ahari
  • Patent number: 9652537
    Abstract: Computer-readable media and computerized methods are provided for identifying terms associated with one or more queries, including aspects directed to manipulating a list of terms associated with a query class by extracting terms, identifying equivalences or relevant terms, and condensing or expanding the list of terms. In embodiments, synonymous terms can be identified. An updated list of terms can be written to a storage location in association with a query or query class.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 24, 2013
    Date of Patent: May 16, 2017
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Sanaz Ahari, Xiaoxin Yin, Farid Hosseini, Sarthak Shah, Adam Troy, Dan Fain, Brian MacDonald, Nikhil Dandekar, Michael Cameron
  • Publication number: 20170046356
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for providing task-oriented query-completion suggestions are provided. A portion of a search query is received, for instance, via a query-input region or search box presented in association with a general web search domain. As the portion of the search query is received, it is determined that the received search query portion is suggestive of a task-oriented user intent. Also determined are query-completion suggestions that are associated with the task-oriented user intent of which the search query portion is suggestive. The determined query-completion suggestions are then provided to the user. As query-completion suggestions are surfaced with input of short character sequences that are associated with task-oriented user intents, users can quickly be provided the relevant, rich content for completing their intended tasks.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 14, 2016
    Publication date: February 16, 2017
    Inventors: DANIEL MARANTZ, BRIAN WHALEN MACDONALD, JEFFREY R. KELLERAN, DERRICK L. CONNELL, SAMIR SHIRAZ PRADHAN, SANAZ AHARI
  • Patent number: 9569540
    Abstract: Methods, computer-storage media, and graphical user interfaces are provided for identifying and presenting rich related sites for task-oriented search queries. Upon receipt of a search query input by a user, one or more query logs are analyzed to determine if the search query is a related to a task being performed by the user. If the query is determined to be a task-oriented search query, search results are identified, as is one or more Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) related to a particular search result. The related URL is presented to the user in association with the particular search result. Additional controls, e.g., search tools that facilitate querying of those URLs determined to be relevant to a particular search result, may also be provided to aid the user in performing the task at hand.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 18, 2016
    Date of Patent: February 14, 2017
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Nitin Agrawal, Tabreez Govani, Jamie P. Buckley, Michael Maxwell Cameron, Liwei Chen, Hugh Evan Williams, Sanaz Ahari, Yang Yang Zhang, Srinath Reddy Aaleti
  • Patent number: 9507861
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer media for identifying related strings for search query rewriting are provided. Session data for a user search query session in an accessed click log data is identified. It is determined whether a first additional search query in the session data is related to a first user search query based on at least one of: dwell time; a number of search result links clicked on; and similarity between web page titles or uniform resource locators (URLs). When related, the first additional search query is incorporated into a list of strings related to the first user search query. One or more supplemental strings that are related to the first user search query are also identified. The identified supplemental strings are also included in the list of strings related to the first user search query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 1, 2011
    Date of Patent: November 29, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technolgy Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Alnur Ali, Jianfeng Gao, Xiaodong He, Bodo von Billerbeck, Sanaz Ahari
  • Patent number: 9436764
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer media for enhancing search results, as well as user interfaces for performing search queries and navigating search results, are provided. A search query is received from a user. A plurality of web pages relevant to the search query are identified. At least one of the relevant web pages is identified as popular. A search result page is generated including a search result listing and a search result page header. The search result page header includes a link to the popular web page to provide the user with a quick and easy way to select a popular web page relevant to the user's search query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 29, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 6, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Paul Ronald Ray, Brian MacDonald, Steven W. Macbeth, Mira Lane, Laura Kern, Rodney Coleman Edwards, Steven Tullis, Sanaz Ahari, Daniel Marantz
  • Patent number: 9405856
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for providing task-oriented query-completion suggestions are provided. A portion of a search query is received, for instance, via a query-input region or search box presented in association with a general web search domain. As the portion of the search query is received, it is determined that the received search query portion is suggestive of a task-oriented user intent. Also determined are query-completion suggestions that are associated with the task-oriented user intent of which the search query portion is suggestive. The determined query-completion suggestions are then provided to the user. As query-completion suggestions are surfaced with input of short character sequences that are associated with task-oriented user intents, users can quickly be provided the relevant, rich content for completing their intended tasks.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 30, 2011
    Date of Patent: August 2, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Daniel Marantz, Brian Whalen MacDonald, Jeffrey R. Kelleran, Derrick L. Connell, Samir Shiraz Pradhan, Sanaz Ahari
  • Publication number: 20160162580
    Abstract: Methods, computer-storage media, and graphical user interfaces are provided for identifying and presenting rich related sites for task-oriented search queries. Upon receipt of a search query input by a user, one or more query logs are analyzed to determine if the search query is a related to a task being performed by the user. If the query is determined to be a task-oriented search query, search results are identified, as is one or more Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) related to a particular search result. The related URL is presented to the user in association with the particular search result. Additional controls, e.g., search tools that facilitate querying of those URLs determined to be relevant to a particular search result, may also be provided to aid the user in performing the task at hand.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 18, 2016
    Publication date: June 9, 2016
    Inventors: NITIN AGRAWAL, TABREEZ GOVANI, JAMIE P. BUCKLEY, MICHAEL MAXWELL CAMERON, LIWEI CHEN, HUGH EVAN WILLIAMS, SANAZ AHARI, YANG YANG ZHANG, SRINATH REDDY AALETI
  • Patent number: 9335883
    Abstract: Computer-readable media, computer systems, and computing devices for facilitating presentation of search result items having varying prominence is provided. The method includes referencing a search result item to be presented within a search results page in response to a search query. Thereafter, a determination is made that a size prominence of the search result item is to be modified. Such a determination can be based on a result attribute(s) associated with the search result item and a result attribute(s) associated with other search result items within the search results page. The size of the search result item is adjusted in accordance with the determination that the size prominence of the search result item is to be modified.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 8, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 10, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Alec John Berntson, Sanaz Ahari, Kieran Richard McDonald, Muhammad Arif Iqbal
  • Patent number: 9311411
    Abstract: Techniques are described herein for processing social search results. Such social search results may be included in a relatively higher-ranked (e.g., a highest-ranked) subset of a user's search results and/or selected from a relatively lower-ranked subset of the user's search results in response to a determination that the relatively higher-ranked subset includes social search result(s). In one example, the social search results (or a subset thereof) may be annotated to include publicly available rich metadata. Such metadata may be extracted from user profiles on social networking domains from which the social search results are received. In another example, the social search results (or a subset thereof) may be clustered such that they are consecutively ranked. In yet another example, the social search results (or a subset thereof) may be configured to be displayed in a designated arrangement (e.g., in a grid having multiple columns).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 25, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 12, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Sanaz Ahari, Timothy C. Hoad, Deepak Vijaywargi, Yatharth Saraf
  • Patent number: 9275158
    Abstract: Methods, computer-storage media, and graphical user interfaces are provided for identifying and presenting rich related sites for task-oriented search queries. Upon receipt of a search query input by a user, one or more query logs are analyzed to determine if the search query is a related to a task being performed by the user. If the query is determined to be a task-oriented search query, search results are identified, as is one or more Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) related to a particular search result. The related URL is presented to the user in association with the particular search result. Additional controls, e.g., search tools that facilitate querying of those URLs determined to be relevant to a particular search result, may also be provided to aid the user in performing the task at hand.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 22, 2013
    Date of Patent: March 1, 2016
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Nitin Agrawal, Tabreez Govani, Jamie P. Buckley, Michael Maxwell Cameron, Liwei Chen, Hugh Evan Williams, Sanaz Ahari, Yang Yang Zhang, Srinath Reddy Aaleti
  • Publication number: 20160034471
    Abstract: A system and method are provided for detecting entity information contained within search results. The detected entity information can be used to determine a category of entity as well as a specific entity within the search results. Entity information can be extracted from the documents associated with the search results. This information can be used as part of the information for an entity card, which can be displayed to a user in conjunction with and/or in place of the search results.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 9, 2015
    Publication date: February 4, 2016
    Inventors: FILIP RADLINSKI, Nick Craswell, Bodo Billerbeck, Milad Shokouhi, Sanaz Ahari, Nitin Agrawal, Timothy Hoad, Song Zhou, Muhammad Aatif Awan
  • Patent number: 9251185
    Abstract: Computer-readable media, computer systems, and computing methods are provided for classifying search results as either of good quality or of poor quality. Initially, a portion of the search results, such as the highest ranked documents, are selected for evaluation. A level of quality for each of the selected search results is determined using a classification process that includes the following steps: targeting features demonstrated by the selected search results to be evaluated; evaluating the selected features to generate a level-of-quality score for each of the selected search results; comparing the score against a predefined threshold value; and, based on the comparison, assigning each of the selected search results an absolute measurement. The absolute measurement indicates poor quality when the score is less than the threshold value. Upon recognizing that the selected search results are of poor quality, automatically executing a corrective action that reformulates the issued search query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 15, 2010
    Date of Patent: February 2, 2016
    Inventors: Girish Kumar, Sanaz Ahari, Farid Hosseini, Nazan Khan, Ahmad Abdulkader, Ankur Gupta, Giridhar Kumaran, Vijay Nair
  • Patent number: 9158846
    Abstract: A system and method are provided for detecting entity information contained within search results. The detected entity information can be used to determine a category of entity as well as a specific entity within the search results. Entity information can be extracted from the documents associated with the search results. This information can be used as part of the information for an entity card, which can be displayed to a user in conjunction with and/or in place of the search results.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 10, 2010
    Date of Patent: October 13, 2015
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Filip Radlinski, Nick Craswell, Bodo Billerbeck, Milad Shokouhi, Sanaz Ahari, Nitin Agrawal, Timothy Hoad, Song Zhou, Muhammad Aatif Awan
  • Patent number: 8977625
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and media are provided for facilitating generation of an inference index. In embodiments, a canonical entity is referenced. The canonical entity is associated with web documents. One or more queries that, when input, result in a selection of at least one of the web documents are identified. An entity document is generated for the canonical entity. The entity document includes the identified queries and/or associated text from the content of a document or from an entity title that result in the selection of the at least one of the web documents. The entity document and corresponding canonical entity can be combined with additional related entity documents and canonical entities to generate an inference index.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 15, 2010
    Date of Patent: March 10, 2015
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Gregory T. Buehrer, Li Jiang, Paul Alfred Viola, Andrew Paul McGovern, Jakub Jan Szymanski, Sanaz Ahari
  • Publication number: 20140297398
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus include computer programs encoded on a computer-readable storage medium for measuring lift. A method includes: receiving requests for content for which a first content item is an eligible content item; delivering the first content item along with a first pixel that identifies the delivery of the first content item to a first portion of the received requests; delivering a second, different content item along with a second pixel that identifies the non-delivery of the first content item to a second portion of the received plurality of requests rather than the first content item; evaluating searches performed by users that received the first content item as compared to users that received the second content item including using the first pixel and second pixel in evaluating search logs associated with search requests performed by users; and presenting lift data to a sponsor associated with the first content item.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 15, 2013
    Publication date: October 2, 2014
    Applicant: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Mehdi Sharifzadeh, Oren E. Zamir, Troy L. Walker, Dan Blandford, Radoslav M. Kirov, Jeff Bergman, Sanaz Ahari
  • Patent number: 8805750
    Abstract: Computer-readable media, computer systems, and computing devices facilitate providing a comparison experience to a user in response to a search query. Upon receiving a search query from the user, entities are extracted from the query. The entities are associated with entity classes. The entities, entity classes, previous user behavior, and other information are used to infer whether the user likely is engaging in a comparison task. If the inference indicates that the user likely is engaging in a comparison task, a comparison experience is generated and access to the comparison experience is provided to the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 18, 2009
    Date of Patent: August 12, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Peter Bailey, Liwei Chen, Sanaz Ahari, Nipoon Malhotra
  • Patent number: 8762360
    Abstract: Computer-readable media, computer systems, and computing methods are provided for implicitly discovering applications using a query or search results, where the query does not explicitly target a particular application. A search engine is used to receive a user-initiated query and to employ a keyword of the query to generate an initial set of search results. Characteristics of the search results are identified and applications that are relevant to the characteristics are determined. The determination of relevant applications include: accessing an application manifest that manages a mapping between applications and predefined characteristics; comparing the characteristics of the search results against the predefined characteristics of the application manifest to determine a match; and, when a match exists between the search-result characteristics and the predefined characteristics, identifying applications mapped to the matched characteristics as being relevant to the search results.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 6, 2011
    Date of Patent: June 24, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Li Jiang, Milind Mahajan, Amit Kumar, Paul Alfred Viola, Sanaz Ahari, Steve Macbeth
  • Patent number: 8732151
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer media for identifying query rewriting replacement terms are provided. A list of related string pairs each comprising a first string and second string is received. The first string of each related string pair is a user search query extracted from user click log data. For one or more of the related string pairs, the string pair is provided as inputs to a statistical machine translation model. The model identifies one or more pairs of corresponding terms, each pair of corresponding terms including a first term from the first string and a second term from the second string. The model also calculates a probability of relatedness for each of the one or more pairs of corresponding terms. Term pairs whose calculated probability of relatedness exceeds a threshold are characterized as query term replacements and incorporated, along with the probability of relatedness, into a query rewriting candidate database.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 1, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 20, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Alnur Ali, Jianfeng Gao, Xiaodong He, Bodo von Billerbeck, Sanaz Ahari
  • Patent number: 8719246
    Abstract: The present invention is directed to presenting a suggested search query. Responsive to receiving a user-devised search parameter, a suggested search query is identified. The user-devised search parameter might have been previously received by a search system, or alternatively, might be a unique query that has not been previously received. A suggested search query might be generated using various techniques, such as by applying an n-gram language model. A classification of the suggested search query is determined, and the suggested search query is presented together with a visual indicator, which signifies the classification.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 6, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Robert Williams, Nitin Agrawal, Farid Hosseini, Sanaz Ahari, Maxim Stepin, Jason Bolla, Bo-June Hsu