Yahoo has applied for a patent for their search engine technology. The main facet of this patent concerns a concept that Yahoo has coined "super units".
"Super units" refer to the grouping of set of search queries by parsing the queries into distinct units and defining various relationships between the units based in part on patterns of units that appear together in queries (I know I know...that's a lot of of technical stuff to take down in just one sentence!). These units are grouped into even larger networks or sets of queries that share similar characteristics called super units.
The information outlined in this patent is much more advanced than the basic text matching analysis model that has prevailed in the search engine industry for many years. It definitely makes for an interesting read. Looks like Yahoo is serious about competing with Google after all!
If you would like read the patent application click here:
...read the patent