Bill Slawski at SEW posts on a dozen newly published Google patent applications (and a couple from MSFT). Seven of the Google dozen relate to local (links are to the applications):
- Generating and/or serving local area advertisements, such as advertisements for devices with call functionality
- Authoritative document identification
- Document segmentation based on visual gaps
- Indexing documents according to geographical relevance
- Classification of ambiguous geographic references
- Location extraction
- Local item extraction
This is how Slawski summaries the 12:
(1) How good a match ads may be to the content on pages they are served upon through a program like AdSense. (2) A process for improving the targeting of ads. (3) Real time transportation data for travelers. (4) An exploration of ad layouts. (5) An automated advertising approval process. (6) Reasons for location-based businesses to use local area advertising, including an improved pay-per-call process.
(7) How the most authoritative local search results are identified. (8) The use of visual gap segmentation to separate information on different parts of pages, with implications beyond local search. (9) Ties business locations with regional areas. (10) A method for reducing ambiguity in geographic location. (11) Deciding whether regular or local results might be shown when at least one query term might be geographical in nature. (12) Assigning confidence scores between business identity and location information on a page.
As I started looking at the applications themselves — maybe it’s late — my eyes started to glaze over. Slawski’s piece does a nice job of trying to capture the significance of the applications in plain English.
Screenwerk 