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System and method for integrating off-line ratings of businesses with search engines

  • US 7,099,859 B2
  • Filed: 01/20/2000
  • Issued: 08/29/2006
  • Est. Priority Date: 01/20/2000
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A self-correcting system for use with a search engine to rank search results based upon a ranking of businesses that are selected from an unrestricted pool of merchants, comprising:

  • an off-line ranking system for receiving any of users'"'"' off-line surveys or feedback about businesses;

    the off-line ranking system generating rating data from the any of the users'"'"' off-line surveys or feedback;

    wherein the rating data correlates higher quality search matches to higher business satisfaction ratings;

    wherein the off-line ranking system indexes the rating data;

    a ranking repository for storing the rating data indexed by the off-line ranking system;

    a result sorter for sorting query results generated by the search engine, based on the rating data from the ranking repository, and for generating ranked matches;

    a profile manager for creating a user profile history from a user'"'"'s address;

    wherein the user profile history enables the user to update a rating that was previously provided by the user, and disables the user from revising ratings provided by other users; and

    wherein updated cumulative business satisfaction ratings from the users'"'"' on-line surveys or feedback automatically cause the on-line ranking system to re-index the rating data, and further cause the result sorter to generate ranked matches based on the re-indexed rating data.

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