Abstract: An analytics system and associated methods are disclosed. The analytics system may be used by site owners and others for various purposes, such as to identify and compare network sites that satisfy particular criteria, and to identify and compare keywords associated with these sites. The system may, among other services, include a service for analyzing keywords in terms of their potential to drive search engine to traffic to a particular site. The analysis may include an assessment of amounts of traffic these keywords are responsible for driving to sites having a shared audience with the particular site. The service may also generate associated keyword-related recommendations for increasing search engine traffic to the particular site.

Abstract: An analytics system and associated methods are disclosed. The analytics system may be used by site owners and others for various purposes, such as to identify and compare network sites that satisfy particular criteria, to identify and compare keywords associated with these sites, and to assess characteristics of typical users of these sites. One feature of the system includes computer processes for inferring characteristics of users for whom user profile data is unknown or incomplete, and for using these inferred characteristics to more accurately assess the characteristics of typical users of particular sites.

Abstract: A system is disclosed that enables users to share product-related information across web pages. The system includes a client that executes on a user computer. The client interacts with a data server to provide user access to product-related information associated with products represented on web pages accessed by the user. The product-related information may include information submitted by other users via other instances of the client.

Abstract: An extraction-rule generation and training system uses information obtained from multiple markup language documents (e.g. web pages) of similar structure to generate an extraction rule for extracting datapoints from markup language documents. By using information extracted from multiple documents of similar structure, including information regarding correlations between such documents, the method produces data extraction rules that provide improved datapoint extraction reliability. Where the structures of two or more documents are not sufficiently similar, the system maintains separate extraction rules for the same datapoint, and applies these separate extraction rules in combination to particular markup language documents to extract the datapoint.

Abstract: A computer-implemented search method and system is provided whereby a file is received including a query, typically for trademark search, having a first list of query terms and a second list of industry terms. The first and second lists may include tens or hundreds of terms. An AND-OR tree is constructed to represent the query terms and the industry terms and traversed to logically combine each of the query terms with each of the industry terms to form sub-queries which are executed in parallel. The results from each sub-query execution are limited according to a sub-query result limit. The sub-query results are combined to construct a query result for the original query included in the file. Duplicate results are removed from the query result and an ordinal number is included for each term in the query result before returning the query result.

Abstract: Various computer-implemented methods are disclosed for identifying web sites and web pages that are related to each other. One such method involves collecting search activity data indicative of particular search terms submitted, and corresponding search results selected, by each of a plurality of users. The accumulated search activity data is analyzed on an aggregated basis to identify search-activity-based associations between particular web sites.

Abstract: A client executes in conjunction with a web browser on a user computer. The client interacts with a data server to provide user access to product-related information associated with products represented on web pages accessed by the web browser. The product-related information may include information submitted by other users via other instances of the client, such that users share product-related information across web pages.

Abstract: A meta-data generator is described for generating meta-data relating to at least one Web site, the meta-data identifying, for a Web site providing at least one Web page, identification of, for other Web sites, at least one Web page associated therewith having a selected relationship with the at least one Web site. The meta-data generator includes an information accumulation module, a meta-data generation module and a meta-data storage module. The information accumulation module accumulates Web page information associated with respective Web sites. The meta-data generation module uses the accumulated Web page information according to a selected meta-data generation methodology to generate said meta-data, and the meta-data storage module stores the meta-data generated by the meta-data generation module. Several meta-data generation methodologies are described, including a link (Web page identifier) analysis methodology, two Web page usage analysis methodologies; and a search results analysis methodology.

Abstract: Related web locations are identified from the web usage trails of a population of users. Each usage trail is preferably in the general form of a sequence of URLs accessed by a user during a browsing session. The usage trails are preferably collected using a special client application that operates in conjunction with a web browser and reports the navigation activities of users. In a preferred embodiment, the relatedness of two web locations A and B is determined using a minimum sensitivity calculation that takes into consideration the number of transitions that occurred between A and B relative to the total number of transitions that involved A and/or B. The method may be used independently, or may be used in combination with other methods for identifying related web locations.

Abstract: The Document Object Model (DOM) of a sampled web page is used to create a rule that extracts item-related data from web pages having a similar DOM structure to the sampled web page. In response to a user request for such a web page, the rule is retrieved from a data server based on the page's URL, and is applied to the DOM of the web page to extract item-identifying data. The item is then identified—preferably by the data server—by matching the item-identifying data to an item in a database. Supplemental information about the item is then retrieved from the database and supplied to the user's computer for viewing in conjunction with the requested page. In a preferred embodiment, the rule is retrieved from the data server and applied to the web page by a client application that runs in conjunction with a web browser.

Abstract: Related links for web sites or web pages are determined from the web usage trails of a population of users. Each usage trail is preferably in the general form of a sequence of URLs accessed by a user during a browsing session. The usage trails are preferably collected using a special client application that operates in conjunction with a web browser and reports the navigation activities of users. In a preferred embodiment, the relatedness of two web sites or pages A and B is determined using a minimum sensitivity calculation that takes into consideration the number of transitions that occurred between A and B relative to the total number of transitions that involved A and/or B. More specifically, the minimum sensitivity between A and B for a set of usage trail data is preferably determined by dividing the number of transitions between A and B by the greater of (i) the total number of transitions between A and all web sites and (ii) the total number of transitions between B and all web sites.

Abstract: A client program executes in conjunction with a web browser on a user computer. The client program captures submitted form data from HTTP requests and presents the user with the option of resubmitting the form data to related web sites based upon information transmitted to the client program from a metadata server. A processing engine, located in the client program or on the metadata server, extracts the submitted data from an HTTP request and creates data resubmission blocks using the extracted data. The data resubmission blocks replace related forms on related web sites but incorporate the extracted data. Instructions based upon which the processing engine extracts the data and creates data resubmission blocks are stored on the metadata server. The data resubmission blocks are displayed to the user through the web browser and can be submitted by the user without the need to re-enter data, in order to resubmit the extracted data to the related web sites.

Abstract: A method and apparatus that displays metadata about a web page currently being displayed by a browser. While the web browser is communicating with a web server to obtain the requested web page, client software communicates with a database metadata server to obtain metadata about the requested page. After the browser receives its requested information from the web server, it displays the requested web page in a conventional manner. The client concurrently displays its received metadata on the same computer as the web page, and concurrently with the web page. A preferred embodiment of the present invention opens a button bar in conjunction with the web page display. This button bar allows the user to view various portions of the metadata for the displayed web page.