Countrytagging

• US 20050097202A1
• Filed: 11/10/2003
• Published: 05/05/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 11/05/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hegerty, Ian D., Gelin, Jan O.
• Granted Patent: US 7,441,044 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A method that iteratively determines which web pages and web sites are of interest to a particular user in accordance with that user'"'"'s geographic location or country. The described embodiment of the present invention determines zero or more countrytags for each web page or site considered. The described embodiment makes two passes (iterations) to arrive at these countrytags.

Claims

1. A method of determining a countrytag for a website on a network, comprising:

determining a first set of hosts that have country code domains;

determining which hosts of websites on the network are of interest to users in a particular geographical location, by looking at the inlinks from the first set of hosts;

adding the hosts determined to be of interest to the first set of hosts to create an augmented set of hosts; and

determining which of the websites on the network is of interest to users in a particular geographical location, by looking at the inlinks from the augmented set of hosts.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the country code domain of the first set of hosts is a top-level domain.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

crawling the network to gather information about the pages or sites in the network, including the top-level domain and connectivity of the crawled sites.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is the Internet.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is an intranet.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining step that looks at inlinks from the first set of hosts further looks at inlinks to globally hosted websites.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining step that looks at inlinks from the augmented set of hosts further looks at inlinks and outlinks to globally hosted websites.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining step that looks at inlinks from the first set of hosts further comprises:

assigning a countrytag to a global host when all of the following are true;

there are more unique inlinking hosts from country code top-level domains than from global domains,

there are more than a predetermined number of unique inlinking hosts from country code top-level domains, and

there are more than a predetermined percentage of unique inlinking hosts from the same country code top-level domain.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the predetermined number is 10.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the predetermined percentage is 60%.

11. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

assigning a countrytag if the root or default document page exists in one and only on ODP country section.

12. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

assigning a countrytag if the host is marked for manual countrytagging.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining step that looks at inlinks from the augmented set of hosts further comprises:

assigning a countrytag to a global host when all of the following three tests are true;

there are more than a first predetermined percentage of unique inlinking hosts from the same country code top-level domain,

a particular country code top-level domain accounts for more than a second predetermined percentage of the non-global unique inlinking hosts, and

the number of inlinkiing hosts from a particular country is more than a predetermined threshold value.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the first predetermined percentage is 40%.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the second predetermined percentage is 32%.

16. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

before the determining step, summing the unique inlinking hosts and outlinking hosts in the augmented set.

17. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

adding extra points to a voting value for a country when a name of the non-global host suggests that country.

18. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

adding extra points to a voting value for a country when an IP address of the host is in that country.

19. The method of claim 1, further including determining a countrytag for a web subsite.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein a different test is used to determine if a website should be assigned a “

US”

countrytag that is used for assigning countrytags of non-US countries.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein a website can be assigned more than one countrytag.

22. A method of determining whether a web site is of interest to users in a particular country, comprising:

assigning a countrytag to a global host of the web site when all of the following are true;

there are more unique inlinking hosts from country code top-level domains than from global domains,

there are more than a predetermined number of unique inlinking hosts from country code top-level domains, and

there are more than a predetermined percentage of unique inlinking hosts from the same country code top-level domain.

23. A method of determining whether a web site is of interest to users in a particular country, comprising:

assigning a countrytag to a global host of the web site when all of the following three tests are true;

there are more than a first predetermined percentage of unique inlinking hosts from the same country code top-level domain,

a particular country code top-level domain accounts for more than a second predetermined percentage of the non-global unique inlinking hosts, and

the number of inlinkiing hosts from a particular country is more than a predetermined threshold value.