Patent: Query Images May Be Selected from the Same Source That a Query Answer May Be Extracted from Under a New Patent from Google

Bill Slawski breaks down a newly granted Google patent Images for query answers that sheds some light on how Google may use images from the same source that a query answer may be extracted from.

The patent does provide some more details about whether an image from the same source as the answer is selected to be displayed with that answer, and how a query image might be selected.

We are told that a top-ranked image may be used as the image that is shown with an answer.

But before that image is selected, another option might be to see if the page where the answer was extracted is among the top “N” resources and includes “one or more images in the set of images, then the image in the source resource having the highest rank in the set of images is selected.”

Or additional selection processing of images may be done, such as further ranking the images included in the source resource according to selection criteria.

That selection criteria may include, “whether:

• The image is in a prominent position on the page
• The image is identified as a low-information image (e.g., “clipart,” or anchor buttons, icons, etc.,)
• Using that kind of criteria, the top-ranked query image may then be selected to be displayed with the answer text.

If the source of and answer does not include images, it is possible that:

• No image may be provided with the answer
• An image may be expanded to images in the set of images that were determined to be responsive to the question query.