Generates knowledge content queries of varying complexity from a multi-media file by detecting drift points from user feedback, then adjusts thresholds to produce different query variations that retrieve targeted content knowledge.
Patent Overview
- Inventor
- Nitin Gupta
- Assignee
- Google LLC
- Filed
- 2022-05-14
- Granted
- 2023-11-16 (published application)
- Application Number
- US 17/744,108
The Challenge
Multi-Media Content Needs Automatic Query Generation
Long-form multi-media content (videos, podcasts, recorded lectures) contains knowledge that users would query for if they knew it was there. Manually authoring queries for each content piece does not scale. The system needs to automatically generate queries of varying complexity from the content itself, calibrated by drift points the user experiences during content consumption.
- Knowledge Embedded In Media Is Hard To Surface — A 60-minute video contains many pieces of knowledge. Without query-level entry points, users searching for those pieces cannot find them.
- User Feedback Reveals Drift Points — When a user's attention drifts during content consumption, that drift signals a topical or pacing break. Drift points mark natural query boundaries within the content.
- Query Complexity Must Vary — Different users need different query complexity: novices need broad queries, experts need specific ones. The system generates multiple complexity levels from the same content.
- Threshold Adjustment Drives Variation — By adjusting thresholds on drift detection, the system produces different query variations. Tight thresholds yield specific queries; loose thresholds yield broad ones.
Innovation
Drift-Point Detection Plus Threshold-Driven Query Variation
The system identifies drift points in user content consumption based on implicit feedback. From the drift points it generates knowledge content queries of varying complexity from the multi-media file. By adjusting the drift threshold, the system produces different variations of the queries, supporting different user needs from the same content source.
- Consume Multi-Media File — User engages with a multi-media file (video, podcast, recorded lecture). The system tracks consumption signals.
- Collect Implicit Feedback — Capture implicit user feedback during consumption: pauses, rewinds, skip-aheads, attention drops, search-during-consumption. These are the drift signal.
- Identify Drift Points — From the implicit feedback, detect drift points where the user's engagement changed. Each drift point marks a topical or pacing transition in the content.
- Generate Initial Queries — From content surrounding each drift point, generate candidate queries that would retrieve that content. Use NLP on transcripts, captions, or descriptions.
- Adjust Threshold For Variation — Adjust the drift detection threshold to produce different query variations. Tighter thresholds yield more specific queries; looser thresholds yield broader queries.
- Output Knowledge Content Queries — The set of generated queries (at multiple complexity levels) becomes the knowledge-content-query inventory for the file. Users searching with any of these queries can be routed to the relevant moment in the content.
Implicit Feedback Marks Content Structure
The patent uses user behavior during consumption as the signal for content structure. Drift points reveal where the content shifts topically, and those shifts are natural query boundaries. The query generation runs against these shifts rather than blindly across the whole file.
Drift Points Are Query Boundaries
Where users' attention shifts during consumption is where the content's topical structure changes. Generate queries around these boundaries.
- Implicit Feedback Capture — Track pauses, rewinds, skips, attention drops during content consumption.
- Drift-Point Detection — Identify points where engagement changed substantially. Each drift point is a candidate query boundary.
- Threshold-Driven Variation — Adjust thresholds to produce queries at multiple complexity levels from the same content.
What This Means for SEO
What This Means for SEO
Automatic knowledge-content query generation is the mechanism that surfaces long-form media in answer surfaces. Knowing how drift points drive query generation informs how to structure video and podcast content.
- Multi-Media Content Should Have Clear Topical Shifts — Content with crisp topical transitions produces clearer drift points and better-generated queries. Mumbled or rambling transitions create noisy drift detection and weaker query indexing.
- Transcripts And Captions Drive NLP Query Generation — The query generation works against transcribed content. Pages with clean transcripts (or captions) get richer query inventories than pages without.
- Chapter Markers Help — Video chapter markers explicitly identify topical boundaries. They give the system the drift points it needs without inferring them. Use chapters generously on long-form video content.
- Long-Form Content Earns More Query Coverage — Long content with multiple drift points produces many candidate queries. Each generated query is an entry point into your content. Length plus structure compounds discoverability.