KR19990078876A - Information search method by URL input - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for retrieving information through a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) input on a computer network, comprising the steps of a web server accepting a URL input by a user, and a URL portion of a domain name of a web server among the URLs. Calling a URL search program when there is no web page matching the input value except the input value; and the URL search program analyzes the input value and, when the input value is a search expression suitable for a search, displays a web page related to the search expression. Searching and transmitting the searched web page or a list thereof to a client.

Using this URL information retrieval method, it is possible to simply find the web page by entering a desired search term after the website domain name without having to navigate and search all the web pages in the website.

Description

Information search method by batched resource locator input {Information search method by URL input}

The present invention is a method for retrieving information through the input of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) on a computer network, and more specifically, a desired web page in a corresponding web site by simultaneously inputting a URL and a search expression in a URL window of a web browser. It is about how to search.

The process of getting specific information while moving to various web sites on a computer network such as the Internet is called "web surfing". Each website has a "Uniform Resource Locator" (URL), which is an address that indicates its location on the Internet, and allows Internet users to access a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape. If you enter the URL of the website you want in the URL input box, the web server of the website recognizes it and transfers your homepage (the earliest page of the website that you have) to your computer. do. Several webpages within a website are linked to each other, and this hypertext function makes it easy to move from one screen to another.

One website has several web pages linked to each other, and each web page has a different URL even if it is in the same website. At this time, the URL of such a web page has a form in which the unique name of the web page follows the URL (Internet domain name) indicating the web site to which it belongs. For example, Microsoft's domain URL is www.microsoft.com, and the URL of a Web page about Windows 98 within that website is given at www.microsoft.com/windows98. In this case, www.microsoft.com refers to the other computer (host computer) where the resource (web page) is stored, and / windows98 refers to a directory in the computer. Such a web page may have other sub web pages, such that one web site is hierarchically arranged with several web pages. In other words, a URL is a means for specifying a desired directory in a file system having a hierarchical directory structure using the symbol "/".

A web browser is a program used to obtain desired information on the Internet. This web browser has a URL input window, and if you input a URL of a desired website or web page, the web browser receives the information from the web server of the website and displays the web page on the web browser screen. At this point, if you enter an invalid (non-existent) URL, the operation will be canceled with a warning that you cannot navigate. Therefore, the user should remember the URL of a specific website correctly and store the URL in a certain place.

On the other hand, as described above, since one website is composed of many web pages, even if the user enters the website's URL only to enter the website's home page (the first web page that appears when accessing the website), he / she wants to To get information, you have to navigate through the various web pages linked within the website. Of course, in the case of a special website, it provides a function to search the relevant lower web page within the home page. For example, a newspaper website has a function of searching for a newspaper article to be followed by entering a search word.

However, even in this case, in order to move to the desired web page, it is cumbersome to enter the homepage of the website and perform a search. In addition, if there is no search function in the website, all the web links are linked to obtain the desired information. The disadvantage was that you had to call the pages one by one.

Recently, various search engines have been developed and used to enable a user to search for a desired web page among numerous web pages on the web. Yahoo, Simmani, Lycos and Naver are examples of search engines. These search engines assign index terms to various web pages on the World Wide Web, store them in a database, and search for "search terms" ", Finds webpages separated by index words that match the search term and displays the list to the user. The user can navigate to the desired web page by selecting one from the list.

These search engines consist of a kind of web server similar to other websites. When a user enters a search term after accessing the web site of the search site, the web server corresponds to the search term requested by the user among the data held by the user. Web pages are provided in a list, including brief information about them (such as an introduction or a URL).

However, since these search engines target only web pages that are analyzed and indexed by their own servers, they cannot be regarded as searching all web pages. In fact, even the search engines with the most information about web pages cover only 70% of all web pages on the World Wide Web. In addition, in the search using such a search engine, there may be many web pages corresponding to "search terms", and in this case, the user must visit many web pages one by one and search for the desired information again. In addition, if a large number of web pages are searched, a lot of time is required for searching, which not only inconveniences users in terms of cost and time, but also requires a separate database of numerous web pages on the World Wide Web. The disadvantage is that it must be large.

The present invention is to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional search system, when the URL of the website that the user knows and the "search term" that you want to find in the website is entered together, the web containing the search term in the website Provides a URL search system that displays pages or lists of them.

An object of the present invention is to provide an information retrieval method that can easily search for a desired web page within a website.

Another object of the present invention is to provide an information retrieval method for searching a desired web page by inputting a URL and a search expression of a desired website together in a URL window of a web browser.

1 illustrates an entire system in which a method for searching URL information according to the present invention is implemented.

2 is a diagram illustrating the configuration of a web server for providing a URL information retrieval service according to the present invention by function module.

3 illustrates a flow of performing information retrieval by URL input according to the present invention.

4 illustrates a screen in which a search result is displayed to a client by the URL information retrieval method according to the present invention.

The information retrieval method according to the present invention comprises the steps of accepting a URL input by a user from a web server, and retrieving a URL when there is no web page that matches the input value excluding the URL portion of the domain name of the web server. Invoking a program; and, if the input value is a search expression suitable for searching, searching the web page related to the search expression, and searching the web page or a list thereof. Is made to send to.

The URL search program has the same function as a conventional web search engine, and analyzes a web document in a web server linguistically to store index word (s) and its position of each web page, and input values inputted by a client ( It is to find the web page corresponding to the part except the URL of the web server's domain name). The URL search program can be written in any language. In addition, the URL program is preferably installed inside the web server, but may be located in another web space and called by the web server if necessary. In addition to the above-described search function, the URL search program has a function of determining whether an input value (hereinafter referred to as an "input value") excluding a web server domain name portion of the URL is a suitable search expression.

The web server analyzes the URL input by the client, and if the URL is the URL of the web page held by the web server, the web server does not call a URL search program and sends the web page directly to the client. In addition, the web server implementing the information providing method according to the present invention, unlike the conventional web server that goes to the error processing step, when the input URL is not the URL of the web page held by the web server, Invoke a URL search program. The called URL search program determines whether the input value consists of a search expression in the format required for the search, and in the case of a suitable search expression, interprets the search expression, searches the database and extracts the corresponding web page. If there is only one page, the web page is sent directly to the client. If there is more than one page, the list is sent to the client for selection. If the input value is not a suitable search expression, an error message is finally sent. At this time, special provisions may be made to determine whether the input value is a suitable search expression, which will be described in detail below.

If a URL retrieval program that implements the URL information retrieval method according to the present invention is installed in a web server, the entire web page in the web server is analyzed, and an index and an index word composed of words or idioms in each web page are analyzed. Extract the web page information consisting of the location of the web page having the data store in the database in the web server. Thereafter, when requested by the client, the web page that holds the index word corresponding to the search expression entered by the client is searched and the result is transmitted to the client. The search results of a web page may be provided in the form of a list of multiple web pages (which may include a brief introduction of the web page if necessary), or in the case of a single web page. You can also give

Analysis, indexing, and searching of such web pages may be performed in a manner similar to that employed by conventional search engines, and is described in detail in US Pat. No. 5,864,863, which is described in detail in the following examples. In indexing, irrelevant surveys such as "to" and "to /" may not be selected as index words, thereby reducing storage space and facilitating indexing.

Typically, a URL has a hierarchy of parts that represent the domain of a web server, parts that represent paths to subdirectories within that web server, and / or parts that represent subfiles (HTML documents). The parts are separated by a slash mark (/). For example, if the URL is www.microsoft.com/windows98/manual.html, www.microsoft.com is the domain part of the web server, window98 is the part of the directory within the web server, and manual.html is the specific part of the windows98 directory. This part shows the document file. At this time, the conventional web server proceeds to an error handling routine when there is no lower web page corresponding to the input value after the web server domain name among the input URLs, and opens the website to the client who inputs the URL. Send a warning

In general, however, Internet users often know the domain name of a web server, but do not know the subpath or file name. Therefore, in such a case, the user needs to go to the homepage of the web server and navigate around several web pages in order to obtain specific information. For example, if you want to get documentation for the windows98 program, you'll have to go to Microsoft's home page, find a web page about windows98, and get the documentation HTML document linked through that webpage.

In the present invention, when the client inputs a search expression to search together with the domain name URL of the web server, only the web document corresponding to the search expression is transmitted among the documents in the web server, and the result is transmitted to the client. You don't have to go through several web pages to get information. At this time, in order to distinguish whether the input value after the domain name of the web server corresponds to the search expression or indicates the name of the web server subdirectory or the sub web document, a condition of a suitable search expression may be specially given as described above. Can be. For example, to indicate that the input value is a search expression, you can prefix the input value with a special character, such as "?", And the input value, such as "××× .cgi” or “××× .html”. In this case, it can be considered not a search expression. In addition, various search conditional expressions may be determined by assigning symbols such as & and + to search conditions corresponding to AND and OR.

In the above example, when the client inputs "www.microsoft.com/?windows98&?manual" into the URL input window of the web browser, the "windows98" and "manual" are adopted. Are recognized as search terms, respectively, and web pages that contain the words "windows98" and "manual" of web pages within the www.microsoft.com site, as described above, "www.microsoft.com/windows98/manual. A web page with the URL "html" is sent to the client.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described an embodiment of a URL information search method according to the present invention.

1 illustrates an environment in which a URL information retrieval method according to the present invention is implemented, and includes a client 11, a web server 10 having a URL retrieval program 13 installed therein, a client, and a web server. It consists of a computer network 12 that connects. The client computer is provided with a web browser having a URL input window such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Mosaic. The computer network is preferably the Internet available to everyone around the world, but may also be a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) connected to specific users.

The web server includes a database for storing the URL of the web page and index information / location information which will be described later. The web server is mainly built on Unix system, but recently, it is also built on Microsoft's Windows NT. . The client 11 computer may be a personal PC, a workstation or a large or small computer system.

All information is stored in a document, usually a web page, written in HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) language, and the web page is sent to the client computer at the request of the client. A web page may consist of simple text information, but mainly includes complex digitally encoded multimedia information such as software programs, graphics, audio signals, and video.

Figure 2 illustrates the configuration of a web server for providing a URL information search service according to the present invention divided by functional modules. Web server 200 is composed of a URL analysis module 210, search-type analysis module 220, search module 230, storage module 240, web page analysis module 250 and index module 260 for each function However, it may be composed of other types of modules in which some functions are integrated.

First, if the URL search program is installed in the web server, the web page analysis module 250 operates to analyze all web pages in the web server to extract words that can be meaningful index words, and the index module 260 index word and its Index information including location information where an index word is located is created and stored in the storage module 240. Index terms are words or idioms, and location information consists of numbers representing web pages. At this time, the index information may include page summary information indicating a summary of each web page, in addition to the index information consisting of index words / locations. In some cases, the web page analysis module and the index module may be implemented in an integrated form.

The URL analysis module 210 determines whether the URL input by the client is appropriate, that is, whether there is a web page corresponding to the input URL, and if the input URL is appropriate, retrieves the web page from the storage module 240 and sends it to the client. do.

If there is no web page corresponding to the input URL, the search expression analysis module 220 determines that the portion of the URL except for the domain name portion of the website, that is, the input value defined above is a search expression, and the search expression is suitable for the search. To judge. The search expression must satisfy a certain format, and if it is found to be ineligible for this format, it is finally processed as an error and the message is sent to the client. If it is determined that the search expression is appropriate, the search expression is passed to the search module 230.

The search module 230 searches the storage module, extracts index information corresponding to the transferred search expression, and loads a corresponding web page or generates a list of web pages. The display module 270 transmits the called web page or the generated web page list to the client through the computer network.

3 shows a flow of performing information retrieval by URL input according to the present invention. When the client inputs the desired URL in the URL input window of the web browser, the client is connected to the web server corresponding to the domain name among the input URLs, and the input URL is received by the web server (S310). Next, it is determined whether a web page corresponding to the input URL exists in the web server (S320). If there is a corresponding web page, the webpage is transmitted to the client as in the normal web server (S370), and the corresponding If there is no web page, it moves to the next step. If there is no web page corresponding to the input URL, the input value excluding the domain name portion of the web server of the input URL is regarded as a search expression for searching, and it is determined whether the input value satisfies a predetermined search expression condition (S330). In the case of a suitable search expression, the search expression is interpreted in order to generate a suitable query (S340). If the search expression does not meet a predetermined condition, and finally error processing (S380), and transmits a message that there is no web page corresponding to the client.

The client generates a query requested by the search expression, searches for index information of the stored web page (S350), extracts a web page including an index word corresponding to the query, and transmits it to the client (S360). In this case, if there is one corresponding web page, the web page is immediately transmitted. If there is more than one web page, a corresponding web page list is generated and transmitted to the client, and the list may include a brief summary of each web page.

4 illustrates an example of a screen in which a result retrieved by a URL information retrieval method according to the present invention is shown to a client. For example, there is an informational website about a movie named domain.com, which provides a URL information retrieval service according to the present invention, and a user may select from among numerous webpages within the website " Suppose you want to get information about "theater." At this time, if you enter the URL "http://domain.com/?Seoul&Movie Theater" in the URL window of the client web browser, the client connects to the web server named domain.com, The URL search program considers "Seoul & Movie Theater" as a search expression. After that, two web pages with the words "Seoul" and "Movie Theater" are retrieved by searching the index information of web pages that have already been indexed and stored. In this example, a web page that introduces the location of a movie theater (domain.com/thea/ location.html) and a web page (domain.com/film/program.html) that tells you about the show, and provides the results in a list. At this time, a summary of the contents of the two web pages is listed.

In the URL information retrieval method according to the present invention, when a user inputs a URL of a website that he / she knows and a "search term" to be searched for in the website, the webpage including the search word among the webpages in the website is included. Alternatively, by providing a URL search system that displays the list, it is possible to eliminate the inconvenience of having to search a large number of web pages in a website one by one, and to drastically reduce the time and effort required to obtain desired information.

Unlike conventional search services that search all websites and web pages on the Internet, by allowing clients to search only the web pages within the designated websites, users can limit the scope of the search and block unwanted information. The time required for searching can be reduced.

Even with a simple operation of installing the URL retrieval program according to the present invention on a web server, the user can be given a function of searching a web page in the web server at the same time as the web server is connected.

Claims (4)

To search for webpages within a particular website on a computer network. Accepting, by the web server of the website, the URL input by the client; Invoking a URL retrieval program when there is no web page in the website that matches an input value excluding the URL portion of the domain name of the web server of the URL; The URL search program analyzing the input value and extracting a web page related to the search expression by searching the web page if the input value is a search expression suitable for a search; And, And transmitting any one of the extracted web page and the web page list to the client. The method of claim 1, Analyzing the web pages in the web site, generating web page index information comprising a plurality of index words and web page locations including the index words, and storing the web page index information in the web server. How to retrieve information through The method according to claim 1 or 2, If there is a web page in the website that matches the input value excluding the URL portion of the domain name of the web server among the input URLs, the web page is directly transmitted to the client without calling the URL program. Information retrieval method by URL input. The method according to claim 1 or 2, If the analyzed input value is not a search expression suitable for a search, an error processing is finally performed, and a message indicating that there is no corresponding web page is transmitted to the client.