The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently published a series of intriguing patent applications from Google.  The applications raise questions about the search giant’s significance in the bottom lines of social networking sites. Sites like Facebook, Bebo, and MySpace continue to flourish, but no one has yet found the golden keys to profitability.   

The three Google patents aim to change that. The patents rely on language processing and other technology to search for patterns in a user’s profile, friend list, and pages. Experts say this could ratchet up social networks’ ad revenue by better targeting ads to individuals.