System For and Method Of Identifying Closely Matching Textual Identifiers, Such As Domain Names

• US 20110258237A1
• Filed: 04/20/2010
• Published: 10/20/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/20/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: VeriSign, Inc.
• Original Assignee: VeriSign, Inc.
• Inventors: Thomas, Matthew
• Granted Patent: US 8,949,251 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/803
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90344 by using string matching techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9566 URL specific, e.g. using aliases, detecting broken or misspelled links
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/3025 Domain name generation or assignment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/4511 using domain name system [DNS]

Abstract

Methods and systems provide tracking or logging requests to resolve non-existent domain (NXDomains) and organizing the NXDomains to support searching of the domain names including ranking the NXDomains based on popularity, e.g, number of hits or potential traffic based on the number of requests made for the NXDomain. NXDomain logs may be organized so that it supports searching by creating an inverted index including n-grams of the NXDomains. Searching includes identifying a target substring in one or more of the indexes, selecting those matching NXDomains satisfying some threshold criteria, and displaying the NXDomains in a selected order such as by demand or popularity associated with, for example, a selected geographical location from which resolution requests targeting respective NXDomains originate.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of identifying a set of textual identifiers comprising:

maintaining a log of requests to resolve unresolvable textual identifiers;

identifying a set of unique unresolvable textual identifiers in the log;

parsing the log for each identifier within the identifier set and counting a number of unique requests for each textual identifier to populate a first mapping of unique identifiers to their corresponding unique requests;

tokenizing to create a list including tokens for each of the unique identifiers contained within the first mapping;

mapping the tokens to corresponding unique unresolvable textual identifiers to populate a second mapping of tokens to a list of unique unresolvable textual identifiers with their corresponding number of unique requests and aggregated geolocation information; and

sorting the second mapping according to the number of unique requests associated with each of the tokens.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving a plurality of said requests, each of said requests to resolve a textual identifier.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein each of said textual identifiers comprises an address on a network.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein each of said textual identifiers comprises a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein each of said textual identifiers comprises a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein said step of parsing the log for each identifier within the identifier set further includes:

retrieving geolocation information based on auxiliary identifiers associated with each of the textual identifiers to populate said first mapping of unique identifiers to their corresponding unique requests and aggregated geolocation information.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6 wherein said auxiliary identifiers comprise Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein each of the unique identifiers comprises a sequence of symbols and each of said tokens comprises an n-gram wherein each of said n-grams is a subsequence of n items from the sequence of symbols forming each of the unique identifiers.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein each of said textual identifiers comprises a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

10. A computer-implemented method of identifying a set of textual identifiers comprising:

receiving a keyword;

for a date range, selecting corresponding indices of tokens;

searching the selected indices for tokens matching the keyword to populate a first mapping of dates within the date range to matching identifiers present in the selected corresponding indices;

inverting the first mapping to populate a second mapping of unique identifiers to corresponding unique requests and aggregated geolocation information;

returning a display list including the second mapping.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10, further comprising:

summing, for each day in the second mapping, a count of unique requests for each identifier;

populating the second mapping with the sum for each day; and

sorting the second mapping according to the summed requests and aggregated geolocation data prior to returning the display list including the second mapping.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 10 further comprising eliminating potential matches that fail to satisfy a criterion.

13. A computer-implemented method of identifying a set of textual identifiers comprising:

receiving a keyword;

searching selected indices for tokens matching the keyword to populate a first mapping of dates to of matching identifiers present in the selected corresponding indices;

inverting the first mapping to populate a second mapping of unique identifiers to corresponding unique requests and aggregated geolocation information;

summing a number of unique requests for each identifier and aggregate geolocation information into a third mapping of unique identifiers and their associated number of requests and aggregated geolocation data;

sorting the third mapping according to the number of requests for each identifier and aggregated geolocation data; and

returning a display list including the sorted third mapping.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 further comprising:

receiving additional parameters;

selecting, based on the additional parameters, corresponding indexes of tokens.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 wherein:

said step of summing includes summing said counts of unique requests for each of identifier and aggregate geolocation information into said third mapping of unique identifiers and their associated summed requests and aggregated geolocation data; and

said sorting step includes sorting the third mapping according to the summed requests and aggregated geolocation data.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 further comprising:

eliminating potential matches that fail to satisfy a criterion.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 further comprising:

receiving a date range;

selecting, for the date range, corresponding indices of tokens; and

sorting the first mapping according to dates within the date range and eliminating potential matches that fail to satisfy a criterion,

wherein said summing step is performed for each day in the mapping.

19. The data processing system of claim 17 wherein said computer usable program code further comprises computer usable code for retrieving geolocation information based on auxiliary identifiers associated with each of the textual identifiers to populate said first mapping of unique identifiers to their corresponding unique requests and aggregated geolocation information.

20. The data processing system of claim 17 wherein each of said textual identifiers comprises a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

18. A data processing system for identifying a set of textual identifiers, the data processing system comprising a storage device including a storage medium, wherein the storage device stores computer usable program code;

and a processor, wherein the processor executes the computer usable program code, and wherein the computer usable program code comprises;

computer usable code for maintaining a log of requests to resolve unresolvable textual identifiers;

computer usable code for identifying a unique identifier set of unique unresolvable textual identifiers in the log;

computer usable code for parsing the log for each identifier within the identifier set and counting a number of unique requests for each textual identifier to populate a first mapping of unique identifiers to their corresponding unique requests;

computer usable code for tokenizing to create a list including tokens for each of the unique identifiers contained within the first mapping;

computer usable code for mapping the tokens to corresponding unique unresolvable textual identifiers to populate a second mapping of tokens to a list of unique unresolvable textual identifiers with their corresponding number of unique requests and aggregated geolocation information; and

computer usable code for sorting the second mapping according to the number of unique requests associated with each of the tokens.

21. A data processing system for identifying a set of textual identifiers, the data processing system comprising a storage device including a storage medium, wherein the storage device stores computer usable program code;

and a processor, wherein the processor executes the computer usable program code, and wherein the computer usable program code comprises;

computer usable code for receiving a keyword;

for the date range, selecting corresponding indexes of tokens;

computer usable code for searching the selected indices for tokens matching the keyword to populate a first mapping of dates within the date range to matching identifiers present in the selected corresponding indices;

computer usable code for inverting the first mapping to populate a second mapping of unique identifiers to corresponding unique requests and aggregated geolocation information; and

computer usable code for returning a display list including the second mapping.

22. The data processing system of claim 21, the computer usable program code further comprising:

computer usable code for summing, for each day in the second mapping, a number of unique requests for each identifier and aggregate geolocation information

computer usable code for populating the second mapping the sum for each day; and

computer usable code for sorting the second mapping according to the summed requests and aggregated geolocation data prior to returning the display list including the second mapping.