A look at a Dozen Recently Granted Google Patents and what they say about Search and search engines.

1. #seozraz webinar:
(with Bill Slawski, SEO by the Sea)
Public · Event · by Basta digital
October 13, 2021 https://www.seobythesea.com
SEOzraz Webinar https://gofishdigital.com
Twitter: @bill_slawski

2. Why look at
Patents?
A business analyst approach to
marketing and SEO.

3. Parts of a Patent
• Title
• Inventors
• Assignee
• FILED (FILING DATE)
• PRIORITY INFORMATION
• REFERENCES CITED: PRIOR ART
• ABSTRACT
• DRAWINGS
• SPECIFICATION
• BACKGROUND
• DETAILED DESCRIPTION
• CLAIMS

4. First Claim For
PageRank
• Method for node ranking in a linked database
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US628599
9B1/en
• What is claimed is:
• 1. A computer implemented method of scoring a plurality of linked documents, comprising:
• obtaining a plurality of documents, at least some of the documents being linked documents, at
least some of the documents being linking documents, and at least some of the documents
being both linked documents and linking documents, each of the linked documents being
pointed to by a link in one or more of the linking documents;
• assigning a score to each of the linked documents based on scores of the one or more linking
documents and
• processing the linked documents according to their scores.

5. Google’s News Ranking Algorithm - Updated 3
times as continuation patents
• Systems and methods for
improving the ranking of news
articles
Inventors: Michael Curtiss,
Krishna A. Bharat, and Michael
Schmitt
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 10,459,926
Granted: October 29, 2019
Filed: April 27, 2015
•
Evolution of Google’s News
Ranking Algorithm
• https://www.seobythesea.com/20
19/10/news-ranking-algorithm/
• determining a quantity of
named entities that (i)
occur in the first object
that is associated with the
first source, and (ii) do not
occur in objects that are
identified as sharing a
same cluster with the first
object but that are
associated with one or
more sources other than

6. A look at 12 Google Patents

7. Systems and methods
for searching quotes of
entities using a
database
Inventors: Eyal Segalis, Gal Chechik,
Yossi Matias, Yaniv Leviathan, and Yoav
Tzur
Assignee: GOOGLE
US Patent: 9,727,617
Granted: August 8, 2017
Filed: March 10, 2014
This is a continuation patent, and the claims
have been updated from finding answers on the
knowledge graph to analyzing audio to answer
queries. They recognize that quote searchers are
intended to show a person giving a quote, rather
than identifying who said what.

8. Generating ranked lists
of entities
Inventors: Toshiaki Fujiki, Slaven Bilac, Kavi J.
Goel, Shuhei Takahashi, Tomohiko Kimura
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 10,691,702
Granted: June 23, 2020
Filed: August 31, 2017
Ranked Entities in Search Results at Google
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranke
d-entities-google-search-
results/372973/#close
A query such as “Science Fiction Books 2021” will return pages with entities on them, and it will create a
knowledge graph from those pages, and extract appropriate entities and rank those in a search carousel in
an answering SERP.

9. Brand penetration
determination system
using image semantic
content
Inventors: Yan Mayster, Brian Edmond
Brewington, and Rick Inoue
Assignee: Google LLC (Mountain View,
CA)
US Patent: 11,107,099
Granted: August 31, 2021
ed: July 12, 2019
Detecting Brand Penetration Over
Geographic Locations
https://gofishdigital.com/detecting-
brand-penetration-over-geographic-
locations/
Google may start analyzing photos to identify brand penetration at different geographic locations across the
country, including Streetviews Storefront windows and targeted advertisements, and identify business logos and
tell what is selling where.

10. Systems and
methods for
generating a user
location history
Inventors: Daniel Mark Wyatt, Renaud
Bourassa-Denis, Alexander Fabrikant,
Tanmay Sanjay Khirwadkar, Prathab
Murugesan, Galen Pickard, Jesse
Rosenstock, Rob Schonberger, and Anna
Teytelman
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 9,877,162
Granted: January 23, 2018
Filed: October 11, 2016
Google’s Mobile Location History
https://www.seobythesea.com/2018/01/goo
gles-mobile-location-history/
Google describes how Location history works with mobile devices, and how people can track their location history over
time. Google uses GPS, Cell Phone Triangulation, Wifi Access Points and other methods of tracking location, with user
permission.

11. On-device query
rewriting
Inventors: David Petrou and Matthew
Sharifi
Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
US Patent: 11,120,090
Granted: September 14, 2021
Filed: July 8, 2019
Rewritten Queries and User-Specific
Knowledge Graphs
https://www.seobythesea.com/2021/09/rew
ritten-queries-and-user-specific-knowledge-
graphs/
A mobile Device Collects Data About its user, and builds a User-Specific Knowledge Graph From that Data. It can
then use that data to better respond to personalized queries about other entities communitated with in Chat, Email
and on the Web.

12. On-device machine
learning platform
applications or other
clients
Inventors: Pannag Sanketi, Wolfgang
Grieskamp, Daniel Ramage, Hrishikesh
Aradhye, and Shiyu Hu
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 11,138,517
Granted: October 5, 2021
Filed: August 11, 2017
On-Device Machine Learning and
Prediction
https://www.seobythesea.com/2021/10/on-
device-machine-learning-and-prediction/
Google tracks a user’s selections on a mobile device and builds a model from user interactions. That information
goes to the cloud daily where it is aggregated with other data, and gets returned to the mobile device to complete
the machine learned model

13. Retrieval-augmented
language model pre-
training and fine-tuning
Inventors: Kenton Chiu Tsun Lee, Kelvin
Gu, Zora Tung, Panupong Pasupat, and
Ming-Wei Chang
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 11,003,865
Granted: May 11, 2021
Filed: May 20, 2020
BERT Question-Answering at Google
https://www.seobythesea.com/2021/05/ber
t-question-answering-at-google/
Google has started using a Pre-Training Language Model using BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from
Transformers) which can be used to guess missing content during query rewriting, help answer queries, Predict
answer passages on web pages and other NLP Approaches

14. Computerized systems
and methods for
extracting and storing
information regarding
entities
Inventors: Christopher Semturs, Lode
Vandevenne, Danila Sinopalnikov,
Alexander Lyashuk, Sebastian Steiger,
Henrik Grimm, Nathanael Martin Scharli and
David Lecomte
Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
US Patent: 10,198,491
Granted: February 5, 2019
Filed: July 6, 2015
Entity Extractions for Knowledge Graphs
at Google
https://gofishdigital.com/entity-extractions-
knowledge-graphs/
Google is working on extracting Entities and knowledge (relationship information) from Web pages, moving on from
Knowledge bases to build Tuples such as Noun->Verb->Objects Triples. Relationships between entities are weighed
(confidence levels) based on things such as involving Temporal Weights, Reliability Weights, Popularity Weights
and Proximity Weights

15. Automatic discovery
of new entities using
graph reconciliation
• Example of “Reverse Tuples”
• “Maryland is a state in the
United States of America,”
• “California is a state in the
United States of America.”
• “The United States of America
has a state named Maryland,”
• “The United States of America
has a state named California.”
Inventors: Oksana Yakhnenko and
Norases Vesdapunt
Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
US Patent: 10,331,706
Granted: June 25, 2019
Filed: October 4, 2017
Google Knowledge Graph Reconciliation
https://www.seobythesea.com/2019/08/goo
gle-knowledge-graph-reconciliation/

16. Providing search
results using
augmented search
queries
• Google Looks for Entities in Queries.
• Entities are People, Places, and
Things (Concepts)
• If There is an Entity, Google may
Augment SERPs with Knowledge
Results (Such as Knowledge panels,
PAA Questions, Related Entities,
Featured Snippets.)
Inventors: Emily Moxley and Sean Liu
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 10,055,462
Granted: August 21, 2018
Filed: March 15, 2013
Augmented Search Queries Using
Knowledge Graph Information
https://www.seobythesea.com/2019/08/aug
mented-search-queries/

17. Generating related
questions for search
queries
Inventors: Yossi Matias, Dvir Keysar, Gal
Chechik, Ziv Bar-Yossef, and Tomer
Shmiel
Assignee: Google Inc.
US Patent: 9,679,027
Granted: June 13, 2017
Filed: December 14, 2015
Google Related Questions now use a
Question Graph
https://www.seobythesea.com/2018/02/rela
ted-questions-question-graph/

18. Quality visit measure
for controlling
computer response to
query associated with
physical location
• A quality Visit at a dine-in
restaurant can be long enough to
eat a meal at a dining table
• A Quality Visit at a Fast Food
Restaurant can be long enough to
place an order at a counter and
purchase it, and leave with the
order.
Inventors: Krzysztof Duleba
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 10,366,422
Granted: July 30, 2019
Filed: September 9, 2015
Quality Visit Scores to Businesses
May Influence Rankings in Google
Local Search
https://gofishdigital.com/quality-visit-scores/

19. Thank you!
Bill Slawski
https://www.seobythesea.com/
http://gofishdigital.com
Twitter: @bill_slawski