Identification of electronic content significant to a user

1. A method for determining content that is significant to a user within a web page, the method comprising:

electronically receiving an indication from a user that the user finds significant content that appears within a web page presently displayed to the user;

only after receiving the indication, electronically analyzing, using at least one processor, the web page to identify a set of topics associated with the content that appears within the web page in response to the received indication;

only after analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics, selecting, from the set of topics, a subset of topics that characterizes the content that the user found significant within the web page, the topics included within the set of topics that are not included within the subset of topics being topics that are associated with the content of the web page but that are deemed not to characterize the content that the user found significant within the web page; and

updating a user profile associated with the user based on the subset of topics;

wherein a user profile associated with a user is stored on a host device and updating the user profile is performed by the host device;

receiving a request for content from a user;

receiving a user identity associated with the user;

accessing a user profile associated with the user identity;

determining content to provide in response to the request based on information within the accessed user profile; and

transmitting the content to a client device for display to the user.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the subset of topics comprises a single topic.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the subset of topics comprises multiple topics.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining the content that the user found significant within the web page that is characterized by the subset of topics.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein updating the user profile based on the subset of topics comprises updating the user profile based on the determined content within the document.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein selecting the subset of topics comprises:

enabling the user to perceive the set of topics while the web page is displayed to the user;

prompting the user to select a particular topic that is related to the indication; and

receiving, from the user, a selection of the particular topic that is related to the indication.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein selecting the subset of topics comprises:

accessing the user profile associated with the user;

determining topics identified as being significant to the user based on the user profile;

comparing the set of topics to the determined topics; and

based on the comparison, selecting the subset of topics.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the topics previously indicated as being significant to the user were selected by the user.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein selecting the subset of topics comprises:

selecting one of the topics from among the set of topics as a particular topic that is related to the indication;

presenting the particular topic to the user while the web page is presently displayed to the user; and

enabling the user to veto the particular topic as the topic that is related to the indication.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising, as part of the veto, enabling the user to identify a different topic as the particular topic while the web page is displayed to the user.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving an indication from the user includes receiving an indication of selection by a user of a content significance user interface element while the web page is displayed to the user.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the content significance user interface element floats within a display that is perceivable to the user.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein the content significance user interface element is included in a toolbar of a browser application that displays the web page to the user.

14. The method of claim 11 wherein the content significance user interface element is configured such that selection of the element indicates that the user is interested in particular content within the displayed web page.

15. The method of claim 11 wherein the content significance user interface element is configured such that selection of the element indicates that the user is not interested in particular content within the displayed web page.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics associated with the content that appears within the web page comprises:

accessing HTML content of the web page;

cleaning up the accessed HTML content to remove information that is extraneous to the content actually viewed or accessed by the user; and

identifying the set of topics from the cleaned-up content.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the HTML content being accessed includes all content within the web page regardless of whether the content was currently perceivable to the user at the time the indication was received.

18. The method of claim 16 wherein cleaning up the HTML content includes removing HTML tags or advertising information from the HTML content.

19. The method of claim 16 wherein cleaning up includes performing speech-to-text, optical character recognition, visual pattern recognition, image analysis and metadata inspection techniques to determine the content actually displayed to the user.

20. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying the set of topics includes using at least one of term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), a uniform resource locator (URL), a file name, content of, or URL for, previously viewed web pages, links to the viewed or accessed content and the user profile.

21. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving a request for content from a user; and

using information in the user profile to inform content provided in response to the request.

22. The method of claim 21 wherein the request for content includes one of a search query, an indication to add content to a video inbox, a request for a web document, a request for an audio or video playlist or a request for recommendations.

23. The method of claim 21 wherein using the information in the user profile to inform content provided in response to the request includes providing content that the user is most likely to find satisfactory based on information in the user profile related to information the user has found satisfactory in the past.

24. The method of claim 23 wherein the provided content is one of search results, ranked search results, video, audio, video or audio playlists or recommended content or web pages.

25. The method of claim 1 wherein a user profile associated with a user is stored on a client device and updating the user profile is performed by the client device.

26. The method of claim 25 further comprising:

receiving a request for content from a user; and

transmitting the request and information from a user profile associated with the user to a host device, wherein the host device is configured to determine content to provide in response to the request based on the request and information in the user profile.

27. The method of claim 1 , wherein analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics comprises analyzing a source code of the web page to identify the set of topics.

28. The method of claim 1 , wherein:

receiving an indication from a user comprises receiving an indication that includes a user selection of a portion of the content within the displayed web page, and

analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics comprises analyzing only the selected portion of the displayed content within the web page to identify the set of topics.

29. The method of claim 1 , wherein analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics comprises:

determining whether the web page includes audio and,

conditioned on the web page including audio, applying speech-to-text and analyzing the text to identify the set of topics.

30. The method of claim 1 , wherein analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics comprises taking a screen shot of a portion of the web page displayed to the user on a display at the time of a generation of the indication by the user and applying optical character recognition to the screen shot to identify the set of topics.

31. The method of claim 1 , wherein:

analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics comprises analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics while the web page is displayed to the user; and

selecting from the identified set of topics the subset of topics comprises:

displaying the identified set of topics to the user while the web page is displayed to the user,

prompting the user to select one or more topics from the set of topics as being representative of content within the web page that the user deems significant, and

receiving the subset of topics from the user as a selection of one or more topics by the user from the displayed set of topics.

32. The method of claim 31 , wherein analyzing the web page to identify the set of topics comprises extracting textual content from the content of the web page and performing a textual analysis on the extracted textual content based on frequency of terms within the textual content to identify the set of topics.