Generating and updating recommendations for merchants

• US 8,355,954 B1
• Filed: 06/24/2010
• Issued: 01/15/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Goldberg, Anton V., Popiel, Trevor Alexander, Mahfoud, Robert H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Smith, Jeffrey A
• Assistant Examiner(s): Desai, Resha
• Application Number:
  US12/822,566
• Time in Patent Office: 936 Days
• Field of Search: 705 261- 272
• US Class Current: 705/26.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063114 Status monitoring or status determination for a person or group
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations

Abstract

Disclosed are various embodiments for generating and updating recommendations for merchants. A plurality of recommendations for a plurality of merchants in an electronic marketplace are evaluated in at least one computing device for validity. An indication of which of the recommendations are valid is stored in a data store. It may be determined that one of the merchants has potentially invalidated one or more of the recommendations. The potentially invalidated recommendations for the merchant are evaluated for validity in response to a recommendation query for the merchant. A list of valid ones of the recommendations for the merchant is generated.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying a program executable in a computing device, the program comprising:

code that evaluates for validity a plurality of recommendations for a plurality of merchants in an electronic marketplace and stores an indication of which of the recommendations are valid in a data store, each of the recommendations suggesting that a respective merchant perform at least one action to improve an online presence in the electronic marketplace, the code that evaluates being configured to be executed at a predetermined interval;

code that determines that one of the merchants has potentially invalidated at least one of the recommendations when a notification is obtained that the one of the merchants has commenced a session of a network site modification tool;

code that reevaluates for validity the at least one of the recommendations for the one of the merchants in response to obtaining a request for a network page by the one of the merchants;

code that evaluates for validity a plurality of runtime-evaluated recommendations for the one of the merchants in response to obtaining the request for the network page;

code that generates the network page including a list of valid ones of the recommendations for the one of the merchants; and

code that sends the network page to a client associated with the one of the merchants.

2. A system, comprising:

at least one computing device; and

a recommendation generation application executable in the at least one computing device, the recommendation generation application comprising;

logic that evaluates for validity a plurality of recommendations for a plurality of merchants in an electronic marketplace and stores an indication of which of the recommendations are valid in a data store;

logic that determines that one of the merchants has potentially invalidated at least one of the recommendations;

logic that evaluates for validity the at least one of the recommendations for the one of the merchants in response to a recommendation query for the one of the merchants; and

logic that generates a list of valid ones of the recommendations for the one of the merchants.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein each of the recommendations comprises a recommendation for a corresponding merchant to perform at least one action to improve an online presence of the corresponding merchant in the electronic marketplace.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein evaluating a recommendation for validity comprises determining whether the corresponding at least one action has been performed, the recommendation being valid when the corresponding at least one action has yet to be performed.

5. The system of claim 2, further comprising logic that determines that the one of the merchants has actually invalidated the at least one of the recommendations.

6. The system of claim 2, further comprising a network site administration application executable in the at least one computing device, the network site administration application comprising:

logic that obtains a request for a network page from the one of the merchants at a client;

logic that submits a recommendation query for the one of the merchants to the recommendation generation application in response to the request;

logic that generates the network page including the list of valid ones of the recommendations; and

logic that sends the network page to the client.

7. The system of claim 2, wherein the recommendation generation application further comprises logic that sends the list of valid ones of the recommendations to the one of the merchants by email.

8. The system of claim 2, wherein the recommendation generation application further comprises logic that obtains an indication of which of the recommendations are valid for the one of the merchants from the data store in response to the recommendation query.

9. The system of claim 2, wherein the logic that generates the list of valid ones of the recommendations is configured to determine which of a plurality of evaluations for one of the recommendations is most recent according to a corresponding timestamp associated with each of the evaluations.

10. The system of claim 2, wherein the recommendation generation application further comprises logic that evaluates for validity a different plurality of recommendations for the one of the merchants in response to the recommendation query for the one of the merchants.

11. The system of claim 2, wherein the logic that generates the list of valid ones of the recommendations for the one of the merchants is further configured to filter the list according to a list of invalid recommendations associated with the one of the merchants.

12. The system of claim 2, further comprising:

a network site modification tool executable in the at least one computing device, the network site modification tool comprising;

logic that sends an update event to the recommendation generation application when the one of the merchants commences a network site modification session using the network site modification tool; and

wherein the logic that determines, in the recommendation generation application, that the one of the merchants has potentially invalidated the at least one of the recommendations is configured to deem the at least one of the recommendations as potentially invalidated in response to obtaining the update from the network site modification tool.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the logic that determines, in the recommendation generation application, that the one of the merchants has potentially invalidated the at least one of the recommendations is further configured to compare a timestamp of the update event with a timestamp of an evaluation for the at least one of the recommendations.

14. The system of claim 2, wherein logic that evaluates for validity the plurality of recommendations for the plurality of merchants in the electronic marketplace and stores the recommendations in the data store is configured to execute at a predetermined interval as a batch process.

15. The system of claim 2, wherein the recommendation generation application further comprises logic that determines that the one of the merchants has invalidated a subset of the recommendations, and the logic that generates the list of valid ones of the recommendations is configured to exclude the subset of the recommendations from the list of valid ones of the recommendations.

16. A method, comprising the steps of:

evaluating for validity, in at least one computing device, a plurality of recommendations for a plurality of merchants in an electronic marketplace and stores an indication of which of the recommendations are valid in a data store;

determining, in the at least one computing device, that one of the merchants has potentially invalidated at least one of the recommendations;

evaluating for validity, in the at least one computing device, the at least one of the recommendations for the one of the merchants in response to a recommendation query for the one of the merchants; and

generating, in the at least one computing device, a list of valid ones of the recommendations for the one of the merchants.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein each of the recommendations comprises a recommendation for a corresponding merchant to perform at least one action to improve an online presence of the corresponding merchant in the electronic marketplace.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising the step of determining, in the at least one computing device, that the one of the merchants has actually invalidated the at least one of the recommendations.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising the step of obtaining, in the at least one computing device, an indication of which of the recommendations are valid for the one of the merchants from the data store in response to the recommendation query.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein the generating step further comprises the step of determining, in the at least one computing device, which of a plurality of evaluations for one of the recommendations is most recent according to a corresponding timestamp associated with each of the evaluations.

21. The method of claim 16, further comprising the step of evaluating for validity, in the at least one computing device, a different plurality of recommendations for the one of the merchants in response to the recommendation query for the one of the merchants.

22. The method of claim 16, wherein the generating step further comprises the step of filtering, in the at least one computing device, the list according to a list of invalid recommendations associated with the one of the merchants.