IP Library Granted Patent US 9,026,511
Granted Patent B1
US 9,026,511 · App. 11/169,151 · Granted May 5, 2015

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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 9,026,511
App. No.
11/169,151
Granted
May 5, 2015
Kind
B1
Abstract

A system receives an indication of a document selected from a corpus of documents and determines a telephone number associated with the selected document. The system facilitates a voice call to the telephone number.

Claims (47)

1. A method performed by one or more server devices, the method comprising:

receiving, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, a request for a document;

retrieving, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, code corresponding to the document, where a first portion of the code produces visible text in the document and a second portion of the code does not produce visible text in the document;

extracting, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, a tag from the second portion of the code, where the tag identifies a telephone number associated with the document;

receiving, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, an instruction to place a telephone call; and

facilitating, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, initiation of the telephone call using the telephone number in response to the received instruction.

2. The method of claim 1 , where facilitating initiation of the telephone call comprises:

providing the telephone number to a device for placement of the telephone call.

3. The method of claim 2 , where the tag comprises code whose purpose is to identify the telephone number associated with the document.

4. The method of claim 1 , where the document is identified using a web browser.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:

extracting the tag in response to user selection of a button on a toolbar of the web browser.

6. The method of claim 1 , where the call comprises a Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) call.

7. The method of claim 1 , where the document is one of a plurality of documents in a list of search results.

8. The method of claim 1 , where facilitating initiation of the telephone call comprises:

initiating a telephone application;

providing the telephone application with the telephone number; and

placing, using the telephone application, the telephone call based on the telephone number.

9. A computer-readable memory device containing programming instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform a method comprising:

retrieving a document;

parsing text contained in the document to identify a name of an entity included in the text;

automatically determining a telephone number associated with the name of the entity, where the telephone number is not included in the document;

receiving an instruction to initiate a voice call to the telephone number, and

initiating a call to the telephone number in response to the received instruction.

10. The computer-readable memory device of claim 9 , where determining the telephone number comprises:

sending the name of the entity to a device associated with a telephone number search service, and

receiving, from the device associated with the telephone number search service, the telephone number associated with the name of the entity.

11. The computer-readable memory device of claim 10 , where the telephone number search service comprises at least one of an on-line yellow pages search service, an on-line white pages search service, or an 800 number search service.

12. The computer-readable memory device of claim 9 , where determining the telephone number comprises:

sending the name of the entity to a device associated with a telephone number database, and

receiving, from the device associated with the telephone number database, the telephone number associated with the name of the entity.

13. A method performed by one or more server devices, the method comprising:

analyzing, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, a first document hosted by a device to ascertain whether a telephone number is associated with the first document;

analyzing, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, other documents hosted by the device to identify one or more telephone numbers associated with the other documents when the first document does not have a telephone number associated with the first document; and

selectively associating, by one or more processors of the one or more server devices, the one or more telephone numbers with the first document.

14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising:

presenting the one or more telephone numbers to a user accessing the first document;

receiving a selection of one of the one or more telephone numbers from the user; and

facilitating a voice call to the selected one of the one or more telephone numbers.

15. The method of claim 13 , further comprising:

analyzing text surrounding each of the one or more telephone numbers; and

selecting one of the one or more telephone numbers to associate with the first document based on the text analysis.

16. The method of claim 13 , further comprising:

presenting the one or more telephone numbers to a user accessing the first document;

presenting text surrounding the one or more telephone numbers from the other documents to the user;

receiving a selection of one of the one or more telephone numbers from the user; and

facilitating a voice call to the selected one of the one or more telephone numbers.

Assignments (1)
CHANGE OF NAME Recorded Oct 2, 2017
From: GOOGLE INC.
To: GOOGLE LLC
Reel/Frame 044334/0466 →