Method for interactively creating an information database including preferred information elements, such as, preferred-authority, world wide web pages

Abstract

A method for cataloging, filtering and ranking information; as for example, World Wide Web pages of the Internet. The method is preferably implemented in computer software and features steps for enabling a user to interactively create an information database including preferred information elements such as preferred-authority World Wide Web pages. The method including steps for enabling a user to interactively creating a frame-based, hierarchical organizational structure for the information elements, and steps for identifying and automatically filtering and ranking by relevance, information elements, such as World Wide Web pages for populating the structure, to form; for example, a searchable, World Wide Web page database. Additionally, the method featuring steps for enabling a user to interactively define a frame-based, hierarchical information structure for cataloging information, identify a preliminary population of information elements for a particular hierarchical category arranged as a frame, based upon the respective frame attributes, and thereafter, expand the information population to include related information, and subsequently, automatically filter and rank the information based upon relevance, and then populate the hierarchical structure with the a definable portion of the filtered, upper-ranked information elements.

Description

[0001] 1. Field of Use[0002] This invention relates generally to a method for cataloging, filtering and ranking information; as for example, World Wide Web pages of the Internet; and more particularly, to method preferably implemented in computer software for interactively creating an information database including preferred information elements such as preferred-authority World Wide Web pages, the method including steps for enabling a user to interactively creating a frame-based, hierarchical organizational structure for the information elements, and steps for identifying and automatically filtering and ranking by relevance, information elements, such as World Wide Web pages for populating the structure, to form; for example, a searchable, World Wide Web page database; the method featuring steps for enabling a user to interactively define a frame-based, hierarchical information structure for cataloging information, identify a preliminary population of information elements for a par...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0019] Further, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for improving the determination of authoritativeness amongst related information elements such as hyperlinked, World Wide Web pages.

[0020] Yet further, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for improving the determination of authoritativeness amongst related information elements such as Web pages by the filtering spurious factors which adversely effect accuracy.

[0021] Still further, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for enabling a user to interactively develop a personalized database structure for information organized in accordance with the user preferences, which may be subsequently populated with preferred-authority information elements such as hyperlinked, World Wide Web pages collected by the user.

[0022] Yet additionally, it is also an object of the present invention to provide a method for enabling a user to interactively develop a database of preferred-authority information elements, which database may be subsequently searched conveniently and efficiently to identify information elements such as World Wide Web pages of preferred-authority.

Problems solved by technology

In fact, not only has unstudied decision making fallen from fashion, but, indeed, if one is found engaging in it, either on the job or at home, he is, at best, likely to be branded unconscientious or, at worst, dumb.

And, one can experience comparable annoyance over even small items.

For example, there is no better way to ruin a Friday evening than going to a movie and finding you've arrived 15 minutes after its started; or getting there on time, only to find what you're looking at, either puts you to sleep or, worse, offends you.

As a yet further problem, and potentially an even more perplexing one, not only has the computer revolution created a greater need for information, but, it has created an abundance, indeed, and over abundance of information to meet that need.

In fact, the computer revolution has spawned so much information, that it is now to the point where the amount of information available on most subjects is typically so large as to create the new and associated problems of going through that wealth of information and selecting from it the specific pieces of information most relevant to the question at hand.

However, search facilities such as Yahoo! typically only provide general organizations of Web subject matter and associated Web pages, those organizations being arranged as categories of Web subject matter that are based on the subjective points of view of the individuals who compile the information for the respective search facilities, or the points of view of the respective providers of the search facilities, or the points of view of the Web information providers, or some combination of all of these points of view.

As a result, such Web subject matter organizations are susceptible to over inclusion and under inclusion of information which effects the accuracy and ease-of-use of the respective search facilities.

While some workers in the field of information retrieval have noted the importance of "links" between hub and authority information elements such as Web pages, and computation of their respective authoritativeness weights, none have proposed systems or methods for enabling a user to interactively create an information databases of preferred-authority data elements such as Web pages, or, procedures for removing spurious factors that arise during computation of the authoritativeness weights for the respective pages.

With regard to the accuracy of authoritativeness computation, workers in the field have found that the computational accuracy is adversely affected by such factors as "self-promotion", "related-page promotion.

Particularly, it has been found that during authoritativeness computations pages with links to other pages of the same Web site can improperly confer authority upon themselves, thus giving rise to false promotion; i.e., "self-promotion," and adversely affecting authoritativeness computation accuracy.

Further, it has been found that in addition to "self-promotion", related pages from the same Web site, as for example, a home page and several sub-pages of the home page can improperly accumulate authority weights, giving rise to false promotion in the form of "related-page promotion", which again adversely affecting authoritativeness computation accuracy.

Accordingly, where all the links of a hub page can be found in "better" hub pages; i.e., hub pages having a greater number of relevant links, inclusion of the first hub page gives rise to "hub redundancy" which unnecessarily burdens computation.

And, still further, it has been found that certain pages pertaining to a number of unrelated topics; e.g., pages of resource compilations, typically refer to; i.e., are linked to, a number of other pages, and accordingly appear as if they are "good hubs" even though many of the associated links point to pages of unrelated subject matter, which in turn causes the relevant links from the same page to become "falls authorities", which, once again, adversely affecting accuracy of authoritativeness computation.

However, while Kleinberg notes his method includes: steps for conducting a search based upon a query composed from the content of the page of interest; steps for, thereafter, expanding the group of pages initially retrieved with pages that are linked to the pages initially retrieved; and finally, steps for iteratively computing the authoritativeness of the pages retrieved based upon the "weights" for the respective page link structures his method fails to consider the interactive creation by a user of a database structure for the information, or optimization of the authoritativeness computation by removal spurious of factors which adversely effect accuracy.

However, as in the case of Kleinberg, Chakrabarti et. al. fails to consider or describe facilities for enabling a user to interactive create a database structure for the information, or optimization of the "affinity" computation by removing spurious factors which adversely effect accuracy.

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