Abstract: Local businesses using on line search advertising to attract customers have a difficult time determining the effectiveness of various search terms or how much to bid for each term or search phrase. Local businesses typically fall into a national category. This national category has words and terms related to it which consumers and businesses use to search for providers and information within the category. Multivariate analysis can be used across target words and terms, negative words and terms, product profit margin, product sales volume, customer value, and click thru success to determine an index value for each search term. This analysis can be used to determine the best potential ad budget for a paid search campaign and the best phrases to deploy and optimal bid rates.

Abstract: A method of using a communication network so that a large multitude of users may simultaneously compete in a skill-based contest includes identifying a large multitude of contestants; grouping the contestants into subsets according to group criteria; and matching contestants within the subsets into subcompetitions. The method also includes, for each subcompetition, presenting a competition task over the communications network to the contestants of the subcompetition; monitoring responses to the competition task from each subcompetition; and determining a subcompetition status of each contestant in the subcompetition; and grouping at least some of the contestants according to at least one of the group criteria or subcompetition status. One or more steps are repeated until there is a unique winner of the contest. The contest begins for all contestants at a fixed start time and converges to the unique winner in a fixed, short amount of time after the start time.