Webpage Currency Detection via Catalog Matching
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing technologies face challenges in accurately and efficiently extracting product and currency information from webpages, particularly due to incomplete, incorrect, or fragmented product descriptions and shared currency symbols, which hinders users' ability to make informed purchasing decisions and leads to abandoned transactions and resource-intensive processing.
Innovation Solution
A purchase assistance system that includes a client module installed on user devices, which scrapes and analyzes webpage data to identify products and determine currencies by matching extracted data with a product catalog, using a confidence score and iterative interactions with the webpage to provide accurate and real-time additional content, such as price trends and competitor prices.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If currency symbols are used to represent prices on webpages, then prices can be displayed concisely, but it becomes difficult to determine the specific currency since many different currencies share common symbols
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses product catalogs and price comparison data as intermediary resources to disambiguate currency symbols. When scraping a merchant webpage, the system extracts the currency symbol and then queries product catalogs containing prices from multiple merchants in different currencies. By comparing the extracted price with prices in the catalog that share the same currency symbol, the system identifies the specific currency through contextual matching, thus resolving the ambiguity while maintaining display conciseness
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of currency identification from relying solely on the currency symbol to using a combination of parameters including the currency symbol, price magnitude, product type, and contextual information from product catalogs. This multi-parameter approach allows accurate currency determination despite the limited information in the symbol alone
2Ease of operation
If product descriptions are simplified on webpages, then the webpage is easier to read, but it becomes difficult to match the product with the same product on other websites
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a multi-functional product identification system that uses multiple attributes (product name, brand, category, specifications, and other identifiers) simultaneously for product matching. This universal approach allows the system to accurately identify products across different websites even when individual descriptions are simplified, as multiple matching criteria increase the reliability of product identification
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates a composite product identifier by combining multiple product attributes into a unified matching key. This composite identification method is more robust than relying on a single product description field, enabling accurate product matching across different merchants' webpages despite variations in description completeness or formatting
3Loss of information
If comprehensive product information is extracted and verified, then users can make informed purchase decisions, but the computing resources and processing time required increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-scraping and storing product information from multiple merchants into product catalogs before users need the information. When a user views a product on a merchant webpage, the system can quickly retrieve and compare pre-collected data from the catalog, avoiding the need to scrape multiple websites in real-time. This preliminary data collection reduces processing time while maintaining information completeness
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a tiered information verification approach where it first extracts and displays the most critical purchase decision information (price, basic product specs, availability) immediately, then progressively verifies additional details if needed. This partial action approach provides users with sufficient information for initial decision-making without requiring complete verification of all possible product attributes, thus balancing information quality with processing efficiency
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems are presented for enhancing a merchant product webpage by providing additional content associated with a product being displayed on the merchant product webpage. A product catalog stores product records corresponding to data associated with different products. As a webpage is accessed by a user device, data is extracted from the merchant product webpage. The extracted data is used to identify one or more product records in the product catalog that are potential matches to the webpage. When multiple product records are identified, a remote server is used to access and interact with the webpage separate from the user device. Additional data is extracted from the webpage based on interactions by the remote server with the webpage. The additional data is used to determine a single product record for the webpage. The webpage is modified based on the single product record.