jimstod - 5:56 pm on Aug 18, 2002 (gmt 0)

My perception is that the Patent is on a new way to input data into the SE...Did I get that wrong?

"Adding more resources is generally the sole responsibility of the search engines owners.

The present invention seeks to reduce the time and resources spend by the search engine companies by placing some of the resource gathering tasks in the hand of the user's web browser.

The present invention would typically load a small program (e.g. Java applet) into the browser that would perform some specified resource gathering and summarization (lightweight task).

A user of the search engine would still perform all the steps they currently perform in activating a search, including: starting at the home page of the search engine; typing some keyword(s) and selecting "start search"; and viewing the results screen and selecting from the results.

The present invention could be loaded for as many URL's as the search engine owner decides. However, to the user of the search engine the present invention does not need to appear graphically and may operate as a background task.

With the present invention in place, a small program is loaded into the user's Internet browser and can be directed to perform several information gathering tasks such as: crawl a specified URL; inform the search engine if the site has updated since a particular date; and inform the search engine of any changes to web data since a particular date."