Business rating method

• US 20080015928A1
• Filed: 07/09/2007
• Published: 01/17/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/11/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Grayboxx Incorporated (Lokesh Technologies Pvt Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Grayboxx Incorporated (Lokesh Technologies Pvt Ltd.)
• Inventors: Chandra, Bobby A.
• Granted Patent: US 7,979,300 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data

Abstract

Address books, activity logs, or similar data that are normally prepared by people for purposes other than rating businesses can be parsed and processed to rate businesses without requiring users to complete reviews. As a result, a large amount of rating data is available and may provide business ratings and rankings that are more complete and statistically accurate. A local search site can provide users with lists of businesses with rankings or ratings based on community preferences as reflected in user data and activity logs.

Claims

1. A process executed on a computing system, comprising:

identifying entries that correspond to businesses in data that represents people'"'"'s activities or notes that are unrelated to rating of the businesses;

determining respective scores for the entries corresponding to businesses; and

determining a rating for each of the businesses from the scores of the entries that correspond to the business.

2. The process of claim 1, wherein identifying entries that correspond to businesses comprises for each entry, comparing information from the entry to corresponding information in a listing in a business directory.

3. The process of claim 2, wherein the information from the entry comprises a telephone number.

4. The process of claim 2, wherein the information from the entry comprises a street address.

5. The process of claim 1, wherein the scores are the same for all of the entries corresponding to the businesses, and the ratings correspond to counts of entries corresponding to businesses.

6. The process of claim 1, wherein for each of the entries corresponding to businesses, the score depends on a set of factors selected from a group consisting of completeness of the entry, accuracy of the entry, characteristics of a person associated with the entry, and a date of the entry.

7. The process of claim 1, wherein the data includes a plurality of address books that comprises at least one of:

an e-mail address book maintained at a web mail service;

a contact list maintained by a desktop e-mail program;

a contact list maintained by personal information manager software; and

a contact list maintained on a mobile telephone.

8. The process of claim 1, further comprising a user providing at least one of the address books.

9. The process of claim 1, wherein each of the entries corresponds to a request from one of the people for driving directions.

10. The process of claim 1, wherein the activity data comprises telephone logs of calls made by the people.

11. The process of claim 1, wherein the entries correspond to requests to a global positioning system.

12. The process of claim 1, wherein the entries correspond to requests for information on specific businesses.

13. The process of claim 1, wherein the entries correspond to searches on the Internet for specific businesses.

14. The process of claim 1, wherein the entries correspond to transactions with specific businesses.

15. The process of claim 1, further comprising a search engine using the ratings to rank a list of businesses provided in response to a user query.

16. A computer readable media containing instructions that when executed on a computer performs the process of claim 1.

17. A process executed on a computing system, comprising:

identifying entries from a plurality of address book that correspond to businesses; and

for each of the entries corresponding to businesses, updating a rating of a business that corresponds to the entry.

18. The process of claim 17, further comprising:

a user providing search parameters to a site on the Internet; and

the site identifying businesses that corresponding to the search parameter, ranking the businesses according to the ratings, and presenting to the user a list of businesses corresponding to the search parameters in an order that factors in the ranking of the business.