Online Search - User Curated Search Result Pages (Yahoo!) - Patent Application - PRIOR ART REQUEST

Question

This Patent Application received a non-final rejection by the US Patent Office! An initial rejection is part of the typical course of a patent application.

The rejection was based in part on prior art found by Ask Patents community below!

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Thanks to YOU, the Ask Patents community, overly-broad claims have at least been narrowed. AN OVERBROAD PATENT ON ONLINE SEARCH - This application from Yahoo! seeks to patent the idea of... user editing search results for themselves and other users! 10 minutes of your time can help narrow US patent applications before they become patents. Follow @askpatents on twitter to help.

QUESTION - Have you seen anything that was published before Dec 19, 2011 that discusses:

1. Accepting USER EDITS to SEARCH RESULTS; and
2. Modifying the SEARCH RESULTS PAGE based on its USER EDITS with a DRAG AND DROP interface;

If so, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question.. We welcome multiple answers from the same individual.

EXTRA CREDIT - A reference to anything that meets all of the criteria to the question above AND ALSO involves user edits applying GLOBALLY to other users’ search results pages, REMOVING DUPLICATE RESULTS or a DRAG AND DROP INTERFACE to proposed user edits to search results.

TITLE: EDITORIAL CURATION OF SEARCH RESULTS

Summary: [Translated from Legalese into English] A method of modifying search results pages based on user edits.

• Publication Number: US 20130159222 A1
• Application Number: 13/330,405
• Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
• Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating Dec 19, 2011
• Open for Challenge at USPTO: Open through Dec 20, 2013

Claim 1 requires each and every step below:

A method for editorial curation of search results, comprising steps of:

using a processor device configured to perform:

1. receiving a search results page rendered in response to a search query;

2. receiving user edits comprising changes to objects in the search results page; and

3. applying the user edits to the search results page.

In English this means:

A method for curating search results using a computer, comprising:

1. Receiving a search results page in response to a search query

2. Receiving user edits to objects in the search results page; and

3. Applying the user edits to the search results page.

Good prior art would be evidence of a system that did each and every one of these steps prior to the Dec, 2011.

You're probably aware of ten pieces of art that meet this criteria already... separately, the applicant is claiming user edits applying GLOBALLY to other users’ search results pages, REMOVING DUPLICATE RESULTS or a DRAG AND DROP INTERFACE to proposed user edits to search results.

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"Drag and Drop User Curated Search Results Pages from Yahoo!

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What is good prior art? Please see our FAQ.

Want to help? Please vote or comment on submissions below. We welcome you to post your own request for prior art on other questionable US Patent Applications.

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Answer 1

This Patent Application received a non-final rejection by the US Patent Office! The rejection was based in part on prior art found by Ask Patents community in this answer!

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Indeed, a very quick search reveals the following prior art:

• US 8,099,406 Lee (filed 03.01.2011)

All elements of Claim 1 are predated by Lee, which teaches a method for editorial curation of search results (Method for human editing of information in search results [title]), comprising steps of:

• using a processor device configured to perform: receiving a search results page rendered in response to a search query; (result items may be returned as a result of the search. [abstract])
• receiving user edits comprising changes to objects in the search results page; (The user may enter new human edited information for some of the result items. [abstract])
• and applying the user edits to the search results page. (The new human edited information may be displayed when other users search and view some of the result items at a later time [abstract]).

Lee was granted, but granted Claim 1 is much narrower.

Answer 2

Well, Google's SearchWiki from November 2008 absolutely accepts user edits to search results. Here's the GoogleBlog write-up: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html

There's also a really close match in the article "Reranking and Classifying Search Results Exhaustively Based on Edit-and-Propagate Operations" by T. Yamamoto, et al. in the Database and Expert Systems Applications: 20th International Conference DEXA 2009 Proceedings. It describes:

"The interaction between our system and the user is as follows:

1. The user inputs a query to our system
2. The system sends the query to a search engine
3. The system receives results from the search engine and presents them to the user
4. The user browses the search results.
5. The user uses the following three operations as necessary. a. Delete and emphasis operations proposed in [1] to improve accuracy of the high ranked search results b. Drag-and-drop operation to classify the search results c. Adding a new query to the system to gather other search results.

After classifying an adequate number of search results, the user can check the classified or non-classified search results easily and obtains the desired information."

Answer 3

This article from November 2007 describes Google testing user-editing of search results through Google Experimental Search:

http://searchengineland.com/google-likedont-like-move-results-up-hide-them-or-suggest-your-own-12797

Answer 4

The patent US7761464 and US20070294225A1, filed in Jun 19, 2006. It is clear to see that it is a valid Prior Art.

The summary of the patent is the following:

The claimed subject matter provides systems and/or methods that facilitate diversifying search results to improve searching and/or personalized searching.

Also, there is an specific topic to discuss the "personalization component" that looks like this Prior Art Request.

the set of results can be enhanced since the returned results can relate to the original query in addition to various reformulations of the query. Although not depicted, it is contemplated that the diversified results can be provided to a personalization component (e.g., the personalization component 202 of FIG. 2); thus, a subset of the diversified results can be provided to a user, the diversified results can be reorder, etc.