• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 5, 2017

Microsoft has patented what it calls an Opinion Search Engine aimed at helping brands understand how customers feel.

Microsoft describes the search engine, developed by engineers in China, as a way to process and collect opinions from data on specific internet users. A computer application may access webpages to determine whether each contains opinion data. If it does, the application may store the webpage. 

The patent claim states that the technology would extract information from each page and determine whether the information corresponds to a particular category of information or an information data type. The information could come from webpages that include blogs, newsgroups, and forums. The technology would identify words that provide an opinion on any topic, and then  determine how many opinion words exist on the page. 

"Opinion data about the objects may relate to reviews about consumer products, vacation locations or any other subject matter that may be of interest to a user," per the patent.

The technology would distinguish between various user-reviewed product features and rank the individual product relative to other products based on the opinions in the user-reviewed product feature.

When the number of opinion words hits a threshold, the webpage would be deemed an opinion page. 

TWCN first reported the news after Microsoft IP announced the patent through a Twitter tweet. The U.S. patent office actually granted Microsoft the patent in September 2016.