User-Specific URL Normalization Rules for Data Consistency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing URL normalization techniques fail to uniformly normalize URLs across different variations, leading to inconsistencies in accessing and storing information about webpages, especially when multiple analyses are performed by different services using varying URL forms.
Innovation Solution
A computing system that normalizes URLs using user-account-specific URL normalization rules, allowing for customization of normalization rules for specific webpages or groups of webpages, and generates a hashed identifier for normalized URLs to streamline data access and storage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple URL normalization rules are provided for different user accounts and webpage groups, then URL normalization becomes highly customizable and adaptable, but the system complexity and difficulty of managing normalization rules increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments URL normalization rules into different groups associated with specific user accounts and webpage categories. Each user account can have customized rule sets that apply to different groups of webpages, allowing granular control over normalization behavior without requiring a single monolithic rule management system.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-configuring normalization rules for different user accounts and webpage groups before actual URL normalization occurs. Users can define and activate specific rule sets in advance, so that when URLs need normalization, the appropriate rules are already prepared and applied automatically.
2Productivity
If a single system uniformly normalizes URLs across multiple services, then data access and storage efficiency improves, but the requirement for centralized rule management and system coordination increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal URL normalization system that serves multiple services and user accounts through a single centralized platform. This single system can handle normalization requests from different services, apply user-specific rules, and maintain consistent normalization across the entire ecosystem, eliminating the need for separate normalization systems in each service.
Solution Approach 2:
The centralized URL normalization system acts as an intermediary between multiple services and the underlying data storage infrastructure. It receives URL normalization requests from various services, applies the appropriate user-specific rules, and returns normalized URLs that can be consistently used across all services, thereby coordinating data access without requiring each service to implement its own normalization logic.
3Loss of time
If normalized URLs are hashed to generate shorter identifiers, then database lookup efficiency improves, but the complexity of implementing hashing and maintaining identifier mappings increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a simplified copy or representation of the normalized URL through hashing. Instead of storing and querying full normalized URLs in the database, the system generates compact hash values that serve as surrogate keys. This copying approach maintains the ability to uniquely identify webpages while dramatically reducing storage requirements and improving lookup efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
The subject matter described in this disclosure can be embodied in methods and systems for receiving, by a computing system, a request to normalize an input Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The computing system identifies a user account to which the request to normalize the input URL relates. The computing system determines a selected set of URL normalization rules that are identified as being activated for the user account from among a larger collection of URL normalization rules. The computing system normalizes the input URL using the selected set of URL normalization rules to generate a normalized URL. The computing system stores information that results from an analysis of the input URL in association with an indication of the normalized URL.