People engine optimization

• US 8,712,789 B2
• Filed: 10/03/2013
• Issued: 04/29/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 06/01/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dun & Bradstreet Corp., DUN & Bradstreet Incorporated (Dun & Bradstreet Corp.), Hoover's Incorporated (Dun & Bradstreet Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Credibility Corp. (Dun & Bradstreet Corp.)
• Inventors: Stibel, Jeffrey M., Stibel, Aaron B.
• Primary Examiner(s): OUELLETTE, JONATHAN P
• Application Number:
  US14/045,558
• Publication Number:
  US 20140040230A1
• Time in Patent Office: 208 Days
• Field of Search: 705/1.1, 705/317
• US Class Current: 705/1.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/018 Certifying business or products

Abstract

Some embodiments promote website credibility and the optimization of websites for people by automatedly quantifying various elements of a website into component credibility scores. In some embodiments, a set of encoded credibility scoring rules are used to compute each of the component credibility scores, wherein the credibility scoring rules are derived based on factors that have been identified by a grouping of people that preferably represent a primary demographic of users that consume the content of a particular classified type of website. In some such embodiments, the credibility scoring rules are derived from commonality that is identified from a sample set of known credible and/or non-credible websites of a particular classification. Once the credibility scoring rules are defined, the system applies the rules to other websites having the same classification as those from which the rules are derived to automatically generate credibility scores for the other websites.

Claims

1. A method for computing website credibility, the method comprising:

with at least one server of a scoring system comprising a processor and non-transitory computer-readable memory storing instructions which when executed by the processor perform;

identifying a set of known credible websites from a plurality of websites, wherein each website of the set of known credible websites comprises a similar set of elements;

defining a credibility scoring rule for at least a particular element of the similar set of elements, the credibility scoring rule quantifying credibility of the particular element based on commonality between attributes that the set of known credible websites define for the particular element;

computing a credibility score using the credibility scoring rule for the particular element as defined on a new website that is not in the plurality of websites, wherein the new website defines a particular attribute for the particular element, and wherein computing the credibility score comprises increasing the credibility score based on each additional web site of the set of known credible websites that defines an attribute for the particular element that is similar to the particular attribute; and

presenting the credibility score with the particular element of the new website.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising identifying a set of known non-credible websites from the plurality of websites, wherein each website of the set of known non-credible websites comprises the similar set of elements.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein computing the credibility score further comprises decreasing the credibility score based on each additional website of the set of known non-credible websites that defines an attribute for the particular element that is similar to the particular attribute.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein computing the credibility scoring using the credibility scoring rule is further based on how many websites from the set of known non-credible websites define a similar attribute for the particular element.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein computing the credibility score using the credibility scoring rule further comprises providing a first score for the particular element when at least a threshold number of the known credible websites defines an attribute for the particular element that is similar to the particular attribute and providing a second score that is less than the first score when less than the threshold number of the known credible websites defines an attribute for the particular element that is similar to the particular attribute.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the set of known credible websites comprises identifying websites from the plurality of websites that exceed a specified number of visitors.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising presenting a suggested action with which the credibility score for the particular element of new website can be improved.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising computing a credibility score using the credibility scoring rule for the particular element as defined on each of a plurality of new websites.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising reordering results of a search engine query based on the credibility score of each website of the plurality of new websites, wherein reordering the results comprises increasing in the results, a rank of a website having a high credibility score and decreasing in the results, a rank of a website having a low credibility score.

10. A method for scoring website credibility, the method performed by a system comprising at least one server with a processor and non-transitory computer-readable memory, the method comprising:

distinguishing by operation of the processor, a set of credible websites from a plurality of websites, each website of the plurality of websites defined in part by a plurality of elements;

determining by operation of the processor, a range of attributes that the set of credible websites defines for a particular element;

determining by operation of the processor, a number of times that each attribute from the range of attributes is defined by the set of credible websites for the particular element;

computing by operation of the processor, a credibility score for the particular element of a new website that is not in the set of credible websites based on a particular attribute that the new website defines for the particular element, wherein computing the credibility score comprises outputting a credibility score connoting positive credibility when the particular attribute is similar to an attribute in the range of attributes and increasing the credibility score based on the number of the set of credible websites that define an attribute similar to the particular attribute; and

presenting the credibility score for the new website.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising presenting the new website with the credibility score adjacent to the particular element.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the range of attributes is a first range of attributes, the method further comprising determining by operation of the processor, a second range of attributes that a set of non-credible websites defines for the particular element.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising determining by operation of the processor, a number of times that each attribute from the second range of attributes is defined by the set of non-credible websites for the particular element.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein computing the credibility score further comprises outputting a credibility score connoting negative credibility when the particular attribute is similar to an attribute in the second range of attributes and decreasing the credibility score based on the number of the set of non-credible websites that define an attribute that is similar to the particular attribute.

15. A method performed by a credibility scoring system comprising at least one server with a processor and non-transitory storage, the method for assessing website credibility, the method comprising:

identifying by operation of the processor, a definition that is specified for each element of a set of elements of a particular website;

for each definition that is specified for an element of the set of elements of the particular website, computing a credibility score based on commonality with definitions that a set of credible websites specify for the element; and

presenting from the credibility scoring system, credibility of the particular website by presenting a credibility score for each element of the set of elements of the particular website, each credibility score quantifying an impact that a particular element has on overall credibility of the particular website.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein computing the credibility score is further based on a number of the set of credible websites that specify a similar definition to the definition that is specified for a corresponding element of the particular website.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein computing the credibility score comprises increasing the credibility score for a particular element of the set of elements for each additional website of the set of credible websites that defines a similar definition to the definition that is specified for the particular element of the particular website.

18. The method of claim 15 further comprising computing an overall credibility score for the particular website based in part on each credibility score that is computed for each element of the set of elements of the particular website.

19. The method of claim 18 further comprising presenting the overall credibility score in conjunction with presenting the credibility of the particular website.