14 DAY TRIAL // Google Search is one of the most popular search engines on the Internet because it suits all the needs for a big part of users. Besides adding new sites to the Google's database, it seems like Google is a perfect search engine and the company doesn't have much more to do to improve it. Or maybe I'm wrong? Some of you can say "Yes!" because a new search related patent was granted to Google.
The patent 7,146,358 was invented by Luis Gravano and Monika H. Henzinger and was filled in August 28, 2001 so it is hard to say if the function is already included in Google Search or not.
"A system performs cross-language query translations. The system receives a search query that includes terms in a first language and determines possible translations of the terms of the search query into a second language.
The system also locates documents for use as parallel corpora to aid in the translation by: (1) locating documents in the first language that contain references that match the terms of the search query and identify documents in the second language; (2) locating documents in the first language that contain references that match the terms of the query and refer to other documents in the first language and identify documents in the second language that contain references to the other documents; (3) locating documents in the first language that match the terms of the query and identify documents in the second language that contain references to the documents in the first language.
The system may use the second language documents as parallel corpora to disambiguate among the possible translations of the terms of the search query and identify one of the possible translations as a likely translation of the search query into the second language," it is mentioned in the description of the patent.
In fact, what is this patent about? Let's suppose that you are searching for "Espana", a foreign word that means Spain. When you'll press the Search button, Google will try to translate the word you entered and find sites that will contain that term in English or other language. This tool can be very useful for a lot of people that are going to use Google for searching after terms in other languages than English.
Today, Yahoo also acquired a search related patent that is meant to improve the quality of search results provided by Yahoo's search engine. I already knew that Google is the most powerful rival for Yahoo, but this new patent comes to confirm that this fact is true.