System and Method for Gathering Product, Service, Entity and/or Feature Opinions

• US 20090217208A1
• Filed: 02/26/2008
• Published: 08/27/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/26/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Biz360, Inc. (Attensity Group Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Biz360, Inc. (Attensity Group Incorporated)
• Inventors: Mushtaq, Faisal, Das, Gavin, Habib, Adnan Mohsin
• Granted Patent: US 8,954,867 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/854
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

A scraper system comprises a first scraper including a scraper manager for determining when to initiate content capture from a first website, the first website including content containing at least one end-user opinion corresponding to a category of interest; a navigation engine coupled to the scraper manager for navigating to the first website; a content capture engine coupled to the navigation engine for capturing the content on the first website; and a scraper database manager coupled to the content capture engine for controlling the storage of the captured content.

Claims

1. A scraper system comprising:

a first scraper including

a scraper manager for determining when to initiate content capture from a first website, the first website including content containing at least one end-user opinion corresponding to a category of interest;

a navigation engine coupled to the scraper manager for navigating to the first website;

a content capture engine coupled to the navigation engine for capturing the content on the first website; and

a scraper database manager coupled to the content capture engine for controlling the storage of the captured content.

2. The scraper system of claim 1, wherein the scraper manager is configured to initiate content capture from the first website according to a predetermined schedule.

3. The scraper system of claim 1, wherein the content includes one or more of blog content, message board content, consumer review content, and traditional media content.

4. The scraper system of claim 1, wherein the content capture engine uses one or more of an RSS feed, an API or HTML/HTTP capture to capture the content.

5. The scraper system of claim 1, wherein the first scraper includes an indexer for indexing the captured content.

6. The scraper system of claim 1, wherein the end-user opinion includes a rating of a product, service, entity or feature, and the first scraper includes a rating normalizer that translates the rating to a predetermined scale.

7. The scraper system of claim 6, wherein the rating includes a value within a first scale, and the rating normalizer translates the rating from the first scale to a second scale.

8. The scraper system of claim 6, wherein the rating includes unstructured text, and wherein the rating normalizer translates the unstructured text to a predetermined scale.

9. The scraper system of claim 8, wherein the unstructured text includes a descriptor and an intensifier, minimizer, negator, or polarizer.

10. The scraper system of claim 1, wherein the scraper system includes a second scraper for capturing content from a second website, the second website including content containing at least one other end-user opinion corresponding to the category of interest.

11. The scraper system of claim 10, wherein each of the first website and the second website is assigned a website impact metric that defines its relative importance.

12. The scraper system of claim 11, wherein the scraper manager uses the website impact metric of the first website to determine when to initiate content capture.

13. A scraper method comprising:

determining when to initiate content capture from a first website, the first website including content containing at least one end-user opinion corresponding to a category of interest;

navigating to the first website;

capturing the content from the first website; and

storing the captured content.

14. The scraper method of claim 13, wherein the determining includes using a predetermined schedule.

15. The scraper method of claim 13, wherein the content includes one or more of blog content, message board content, consumer review content, and traditional media content.

16. The scraper method of claim 13, wherein the capturing includes using one or more of an RSS feed, an API or HTML/HTTP capture to capture the content.

17. The scraper method of claim 13, further comprising indexing the captured content.

18. The scraper method of claim 13, wherein the end-user opinion includes a rating of a product, service, entity or feature, and further comprising translating the rating to a predetermined scale.

19. The scraper method of claim 18, wherein the rating includes a value within a first scale, and wherein the translating includes translating the rating from the first scale to a second scale.

20. The scraper method of claim 18, wherein the rating includes unstructured text, and wherein the translating includes translating the unstructured text to a predetermined scale.

21. The scraper method of claim 20, wherein the unstructured text includes a descriptor and an intensifier, minimizer, negator, or polarizer.

22. The scraper method of claim 13, wherein the first website includes a website impact metric that defines its importance relative to other websites.

23. The scraper method of claim 22, wherein the determining uses the website impact metric to determine when to initiate content capture.