Method and system for mapping and searching the Internet and displaying the results in a visual form

• US 7,085,753 B2
• Filed: 03/22/2001
• Issued: 08/01/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/22/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Accessify, LLC (Ascend Innovation Management, LLC)
• Original Assignee: E-Nvent Usa, Inc.
• Inventors: Weiss, Dov, Segev, Aviv
• Primary Examiner(s): LE, UYEN T
• Application Number:
  US09/814,399
• Publication Number:
  US 20020138487A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,958 Days
• Field of Search: 707/2, 707/1, 707/3, 707/10, 709/217, 345/419
• US Class Current: 707/710
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/353 into predefined classes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9027 Trees
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

Method for carrying out a search of Web sites according to a search criteria, comprising the steps of (a) pre-indexing the sites of the Web, including grouping the Web sites according to predefined group-criteria; (b) pre-classifying each Web site according to a predefined set of properties; (c) pre-visual-formulating each Web site according to its identified properties; and (d) upon searching of Web sites that sustain a search criterion, displaying the formed site results divided into said pre-indexed groups wherein each site within a group is displayed according to its visual-formulation.

Claims

1. A method for enabling an Internet search according to search criterion and display of search results on a user'"'"'s display, comprising:

pre-indexing by a search engine provider sites of the Internet, wherein said preindexing comprises;

using a spider program, accessing as many web sites as possible, determining all links pointing into and out from each web site, and forming a map of said links;

analyzing the map of said links and assuming that web sites pointing to other web sites have a common denominator with said other web sites, dividing the web sites into several relational groups according to their common denominator;

labeling each relational group by giving to it a suitable name using text based analysis;

upon searching by a user for web sites that sustain the search criterion, displaying on the user'"'"'s display the search results divided into said several relational groups as a pictorial representation reflecting a relational structure of various relational groups sa determined by the pre-indexing.

2. A method according to claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

using the spider program by the search engine provider, classifying by determining for each web site whether it satisfies a predefined set of properties;

based on said classifying results, forming for each web site by the search engine provider a representative visual image, and associating the image with that web site; and

upon searching by a user for web sites that sustain the search criterion, displaying on the user'"'"'s display the search results wherein each web site within a group is displayed according to its visual formulation.

3. A method according to claim 2, wherein the user'"'"'s search results are displayed in a form of hierarchical arrangement, wherein said arrangement comprises units of continents-countries-cities-streets-buildings, each unit being a group found by the pre-indexing and each web site being represented by visual representation as formulated.

4. A method according to claim 2, wherein said set of properties comprises one or more parameters relating to said web site'"'"'s importance, the nature of said web site'"'"'s owner, the existence of an e-store within said web site, the existence of a “

chat room”

within said web site, the existence of a forum within said web site, the existence of multimedia file(s) and/or their amount and/or size within said web site, the frequently used keywords in the textual data of said web site, whether said web site is “

official,”

the essence of said site, and/or the amount of information in said site.

5. A method according to claim 4, wherein the importance of a web site is a function of the number of hyperlinks pointing to and from the web site.

6. A method according to claim 4, wherein the amount of information in a web site is determined according to the number of characters, and/or the number of words, and/or the number of bytes included within said web site.

7. A method according to claim 2, wherein said representative visual image is relative to the properties of the web site.

8. A method according to claim 7, wherein the representative visual image of the web site is an image of a building, wherein the height of the building is proportional to the importance of the web site.

9. A method according to claim 2, wherein the representative visual image of the web site is an image of a building, wherein the width of said building is proportional to the amount of information within said web site.

10. A method according to claim 2, wherein a representative visual image of commercial web site is an image of an office-type building.

11. A method according to claim 2, wherein a representative visual image of a personal web site is an image of a house.

12. A method according to claim 2, wherein each representative visual image of a web site owned by an academy and/or college and/or school is presented as a campus-type building.

13. A method according to claim 2, wherein the presence of an e-store in a web site is presented in the representative visual image as a display window within a building representing the site.

14. A method according to claim 1, wherein the analysis of the links that creates dividing into groups is based on factors selected from the group consisting of:

density of links, mutual linkage between sites, direction of links, proportion of links and repetition of links.

15. A method according to claim 1, wherein the groups have hierarchical structure.