SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR SCORING A PLURALITY OF WEB PAGES ACCORDING TO BRAND REPUTATION

• US 20110004504A1
• Filed: 07/01/2009
• Published: 01/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: FindHow, Inc.
• Original Assignee: FindHow, Inc.
• Inventors: Smith, David J., Ives, Edward
• Application Number:
  US12/496,283
• Publication Number:
  US 20110004504A1
• 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

Systems and methods taught herein provide an objective scoring mechanism based at least in part on a brand reputation of an organization owning a web page. In one aspect, brand reputation information is used to assign a score to a web page indicating the page'"'"'s trustworthiness. Thus, rather than determining trustworthiness only from the intrinsic content of the web page, or from extrinsic relationships between web pages, a user may be provided with an indication of trustworthiness from at least one brand reputation metric of the organization that makes the web page available.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of scoring a plurality of web pages, comprising computer-implemented acts of:

(A) querying an electronic database to identify an organization owning a domain name;

(B) using at least one external input, assigning a first score based at least in part on a brand reputation metric to the organization;

(C) identifying a URL which identifies a web page, the URL containing a reference to the domain name;

(D) assigning a second score to the web page based at least in part on the first score assigned to the organization; and

(E) processing the URL according to the second score.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the brand reputation metric comprises a brand measurement metric.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the brand measurement metric comprises a brand awareness metric.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the brand reputation metric comprises a brand performance proxy.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the brand performance proxy comprises a financial metric.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the financial metric comprises a revenue metric.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein the brand performance proxy comprises a marketing media spending metric.

8. The method of claim 4 wherein the brand performance proxy comprises an organizational size metric.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the organizational size metric comprises an employee count of the organization.

10. The method of claim 4 wherein the brand performance proxy comprises a count of references to the organization in documents.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the documents comprise news stories.

12. The method of claim 4 wherein the brand performance proxy comprises a website traffic metric.

13. The method of claim 4 wherein the brand performance proxy comprises a brand age metric.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein processing includes storing in an electronic storage medium the second score in association with the URL.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein processing includes:

in response to a query from an end user,

selecting at least one URL which satisfies the query;

generating a list of hyperlinks corresponding to the at least one URL;

sorting the list of hyperlinks according to the assigned scores;

and displaying the sorted list of hyperlinks.

16. A computer implemented method of scoring a plurality of web pages, comprising computer-implemented acts of:

(A) identifying an organization;

(B) using at least one external input, assigning a first score to the organization based at least in part on a brand reputation metric;

(C) identifying a domain name owned by the organization;

(D) assigning a second score to the domain name based at least in part on the first score;

(E) identifying a URL that identifies a web page, the URL containing a reference to the domain name;

(F) assigning a third score to the URL based at least in part on the second score; and

(G) processing the URL according to the third score.

17. A computer readable medium having instructions recorded thereon, which, when executed by a computer, performs a method for scoring a plurality of web pages, the method comprising acts of:

(A) identifying an organization owning a domain name;

(B) using at least one external input, assigning a first score to the organization based at least in part on a brand reputation metric;

(C) identifying a URL which identifies a web page, the URL containing a reference to the domain name.

(D) assigning a second score to the web page based at least in part on the first score assigned to the organization; and

(D) processing the URL according to the second score.

18. A system for scoring a plurality of web pages, the system comprising at least one processor programmed to implement:

a location facility operable to receive a URL at which a web page is made available for access by an online provider;

a database facility, in communication with the location facility, operable to store the URL received by the location facility;

a web site spidering facility, in communication with the location facility, operable to identify at least one URL at which a web page is located and to communicate the at least one URL to the location facility;

a domain name ownership determination facility, in communication with the database facility, operable to access the domain name portion of a URL stored in the database facility and to store, in a data structure, an owning organization for the URL based on the ownership of the domain name;

a brand name reputation determination facility, in communication with the database facility, operable to access the owning organization stored in the database facility and to generate a brand reputation score for the owning organization and to store the brand reputation score in the database facility;

a URL scoring facility, in communication with the database facility, operable to access a URL, its owning organization, and the owning organization'"'"'s brand reputation score stored in the database facility and generate a URL score for the URL based at least in part on the brand reputation score and to store the URL score in the database facility;

a search facility, in communication with the database facility, operable to access the URLs and URL scores stored in the database facility, and to create a search results page, the search results being sorted at least in part according to the URL scores.