Patent ID: 7085736

Claim:
A method of identifying an item represented on a web page retrieved by a client computer, the method comprising, on the client computer: sending a request to a server, wherein the request specifies at least a portion of an electronic address from which the web page was retrieved; receiving a rule in response to the request, wherein the rule is associated with a plurality of web pages that share a common web page structure, and is capable of using the common web page structure to extract information from said web pages; applying the rule to the web page, wherein applying the rule comprises, on the client computer, traversing a structural graph representation of the web page, according to a path specified by the rule, to obtain access to a node of the structural graph representation; extracting from the web page, based at least upon access to the node, item-identifying data descriptive of the item represented on the web page; using the item-identifying data extracted from the web page to retrieve, over a network, supplemental information about the item; and displaying said supplemental information on the client computer in conjunction with a display of the web page; and wherein the supplemental information comprises information previously extracted from a second web page via application of a second rule to the second web page, said second web page including information about said item.