Patent ID: 7949724

Claim:
A method for monitoring user Internet activity based on domain name system (“DNS”) information, the method comprising: accessing one or more query logs from one or more DNS servers of an internet service provider, the one or more query logs including one or more DNS requests; retrieving the one or more DNS requests from the query logs, where a given DNS requests is from a computing device requesting web content from a web server indicated by an internet protocol (“IP”) address; translating the DNS requests into processable information comprising a table maintained by the internet service provider indicating a type of content associated with a corresponding IP address; processing the translated DNS requests to determine Internet-based activity information of the computing device that requested the web content on the basis of the type of content associated with the corresponding IP address; determining attention data based on the activity information, where the attention data indicates web activity trends of the computing device on the basis of the corresponding IP address accessed by the computing device and the type of content associated with the IP address; providing the attention data from the internet service provider to a search engine processing device; incorporating the attention data provided by the internet service provider with one or more existing criteria used by the search engine processing device to determine search result relevancy; and updating search engine result operations using the attention data.