Paid search engine bid management

Paid Search Engine Tools, LLC

Patent 7,043,450 (the '450 patent) has been asserted by Paid Search Engine Tools, LLC against Microsoft Corp. and Google, Inc. in federal district court alleging patent infringement. The '450 patent pertains to a system for monitoring keyword bids across one or more search engines so that that marketers can make adjustments to their pay-per-click bids. This patent may impact any party that is in the business of selling keywords for advertising and marketing. The challenge is to determine whether the patent is valid.

#13Database access system
Applies to Claims 1,5
Last updated: about 1 year ago
Summary / Description
Summary / DescriptionAn improved human user computer interface system, wherein a user characteristic or set of characteristics, such as demographic profile or societal "role", is employed to define a scope or domain of operation. The operation itself may be a database search, to interactively define a taxonomic context for the operation, a business negotiation, or other activity. After retrieval of results, a scoring or ranking may be applied according to user define criteria, which are, for example, commensurate with the relevance to the context, but may be, for example, by date, source, or other secondary criteria. A user profile is preferably stored in a computer accessible form, and may be used to provide a history of use, persistent customization, collaborative filtering and demographic information for the user. Advantageously, user privacy and anonymity is maintained by physical and algorithmic controls over access to the personal profiles, and releasing only aggregate data without personally identifying information or of small groups.
 
Basic Information
Type of Prior ArtIssued Patents - US
 
CountryUnited States of America
 
Patent/Application #7181438
 
Kind CodeUnited States (US) - United STATES Patent - A
 
Patentee NameAssignee: Alberti Anemometer, LLC
 
Relevant Pages, Columns, or Lines(1) col. 27, ln 66 - col. 28,
 
URLhttp://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/...
 
Publication DateMay 30, 2000
 
Additional InformationDate listed is filing date
 
Notes / To Do
Notes
 
Excerpt
1 col. 27, ln 66 - col. 28, ln 9 The present invention therefore seeks to provide improved human computer user interfaces, as well as supporting infrastructures. The present invention particularly improves existing massive unstructured database search and retrieval technologies, by providing specific improvements in various aspects and at various levels of analysis. . . 2 col. 46, ln 34 - col. 47, ln 2 According to the present invention, an information retrieval hypermedia system is provided which includes an adaptive user interface, in which presented search results contain hierarchal associations of sets of documents, wherein respective hierarchal associations are based on user-specific data distinct from the formal query itself. Thus, for example, according to a user hierarchal schema, documents providing similar or related information are classified together, wherein this similarity or relatedness is not defined intrinsically in the query. . . 3 col. 62, ln 3-61 It is known in the art of search engines to rank objects according to their quality, and therefore to prioritize the objects, for example an ordered presentation, based on this quality, independent of content. The object need not be a document or text, and in fact may be, for example, a domain, record or other source. The quality factor itself may be, e.g., investment in site, frequency of visits, duration of visits, hyperlinks, or human editor's opinion of quality. On the other hand, objects may also be ranked according to their relevance to a particular problem, i.e., in content or context-sensitive manner, by such techniques as counting the frequency of key words, proximity of key words, the appearance of key words in title or key word field, or by constructs that attempt to measure conceptual relevance semantically. In both cases, the particular factor or factors stressed by a search engine will differ, and these differences contribute to the distinctive response or "personality" of a search engine. One embodiment of the present invention, therefore, advantageously employs both types of classification data in order to determine the ranking of a record corresponding to a query. . .
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Claims
Second method for managing offers for keywords

A method of managing offers for a keyword made to a search engine, said offers identifying an amount an offeror will pay upon a searcher's use of an offeror-supplied reference located using the keyword within said search engine, comprising presenting adjacently-ranked authorized payment amounts for a plurality of target keywords at one or more Internet search engines on a single display screen, each keyword comprising one or more words, in a manner that distinctively identifies one or more selected authorized payments of interest.
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Reference 3 above
Reference 3 above
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Managing offers for a keyword

A method of managing offers for a keyword made to a search engine, said offers identifying an amount an offeror will pay upon a searcher's use of an offeror-supplied reference located using the keyword within said search engine, comprising accumulating adjacently-ranked authorized payment amounts for a plurality of target keywords, each target keyword comprising one or more words, each authorized payment amount representing an offeror's authorized payment for one of said keywords at one or more Internet search engines, and presenting the adjacently-ranked authorized payment amounts for a plurality of target keywords on a single display screen to a user.
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References 1, 2 and 3 above
References 1, 2 and 3 above
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