Patent ID: 7073132

Claim:
A method of obtaining a list of resource links indexed in a category hierarchy to be presented to a user, the resource links pointing to resources on a network, the method comprising the following steps to be carried out by a computer system: monitoring users' interaction with resource links by: for users' interaction with a resource link in the category hierarchy, generating a usage entry in a usage table on a server computer, wherein each usage entry includes a set of activity parameters comprising a link ID, a user ID and a timestamp, analyzing a user's interaction with the resource links placed in any one category of the category hierarchy including retrieving, from the usage table, the user's entries for resource links within the one category; and calculating a user rating for the user in the one category; rating resource links from a requested category in the category hierarchy, the rating comprising: retrieving all resource links placed within the requested category and all resource links placed within all categories held by the requested category, and rating the retrieved resource links using accumulated sets of activity parameters in the usage table, the resource links ratings based on the calculated user ratings of a plurality of users who have previously interacted with a resource link within the requested category or any categories held by the requested category.