Browser-based provisioning of quality metadata

• US 9,065,827 B1
• Filed: 08/17/2012
• Issued: 06/23/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 08/17/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Taylor, Brett R., Vaswani, Ameet N., Kassamali, Faizal S., Tucker, Ryan, Atreya, Ranganath, Zampani, Michael V.
• Primary Examiner(s): DOAN, DUYEN MY
• Application Number:
  US13/588,928
• Time in Patent Office: 1,040 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709224-226
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/10 for controlling access to devices or network resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

Various features are disclosed for generating and presenting users with resource metadata regarding the usefulness or predicted usefulness of particular pages, sites, and/or other network resources. The metadata may be based partly or wholly on the monitored browsing behaviors of many users, including behaviors reflective of whether particular resources were useful to the users. The metadata may, in some cases, be personalized for particular users based, for example, on their browsing environments or contexts. For example, the metadata presented to a smartphone user regarding a particular link may reflect a determination of whether the target resource is well suited for display on smartphones generally or on the user'"'"'s particular model of smartphone.

Claims

1. A system for providing resource metadata to browser users, the system comprising:

a computer system comprising one or more computing devices and a non-transitory storage medium, said computer system configured to serve as an intermediary between user computing devices and content sites, and to request network resources, including pages, on behalf of the user computing devices in response to requests from the user computing devices, the computer system programmed to implement a process that comprises;

collecting behavioral data reflective of user interactions with particular network resources, said behavioral data based, at least, on said requests from the user computing devices, said behavioral data including data reflecting a plurality of different categories of user behavior, wherein collecting the behavioral data comprises storing the behavioral data in association with user device attribute information;

generating, for a particular network resource, based at least partly on the collected behavioral data, metadata reflective of the usefulness of the network resources to users, said metadata comprising a plurality of ratings of the network resource, each rating corresponding to a different one of the categories of user behavior, wherein generating the metadata comprises using the user device attribute information to generate separate ratings of the network resource for each of a plurality of user device categories; and

provide the metadata, including the plurality of ratings of the network resource, for display to the browser users in association with links to the corresponding network resource, to thereby assist users in determining whether to access the network resource.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the metadata is based at least partly on visit durations of users.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer system is programmed to inject the metadata into pages being retrieved by the user computing devices.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer system is programmed to provide to the browser users personalized metadata that is dependent upon the types of computing devices used by such users.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer system is programmed to provide to the browser users personalized metadata that is dependent upon demographic information of such users.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the behavioral data includes data regarding zooming and panning actions performed by users during viewing of pages, and the metadata reflects the zooming and panning behaviors.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the particular network resource is a content page, and the plurality of ratings includes a visit duration rating that is based on a measure of amounts of time spent by users viewing the content page.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the user device categories is a mobile device category.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein generating the plurality of ratings comprises generating a rating representing a suitability of the network resource for viewing on devices in said mobile device category, said rating representing suitability based at least partly on zooming actions performed on the network resource with devices falling in the mobile device category.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer system is responsive to a request from a user device for a page that includes a link to the network resource by at least:

determining a user device category of the user device;

determining a rating of the network resource, said rating being specific to said user device category; and

outputting an indication of said rating to the user device for display in association with the link.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of categories of user behavior includes categories that are based on user device attributes of the user computing devices.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of categories includes a category based on bookmarking behaviors of users.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of categories includes a category based on social media behaviors of users.

14. Non-transitory computer storage having stored thereon program instructions that direct a computing system to perform a process that comprises:

collecting behavioral data reflective of user interactions with a first network-accessible page, said behavioral data including data reflecting a plurality of categories of user behavior, wherein collecting the behavioral data comprises storing the behavioral data in association with user device type information;

generating metadata for the page based on the collected behavioral data, said metadata including a plurality of ratings of the first page, each of which corresponds to a different respective one of the categories of user behavior, wherein generating the metadata comprises generating, for each of a plurality of user device categories, a rating representing a suitability of the first page for viewing on user devices falling within the respective user device category;

receiving a request from a user device for a second network-accessible page that includes a link to the first network-accessible page; and

in response to the request, outputting to the user device at least some of the plurality of ratings.

15. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 14, wherein outputting at least some of the plurality of ratings comprises injecting an indication of the plurality of ratings into the second page.

16. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 14, wherein outputting at least some of the plurality of ratings comprises:

identifying a subset of the ratings that are relevant to the request; and

outputting only the subset of the ratings, such that less than all of the ratings are output to the user device.

17. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 14, wherein the plurality of categories of user behavior includes a category that is based on visit duration.

18. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 14, wherein the plurality of categories of user behavior includes at least one category that is based on user device attributes.

19. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 14, wherein the plurality of categories of user behavior includes a category based on bookmarking behaviors of users.

20. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 14, wherein the plurality of categories of user behavior includes a category based on social media behaviors of users.

21. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 14, wherein generating the metadata comprises using recorded zooming behaviors of mobile device users to generate a rating representing a suitability of the first page for viewing on mobile devices.