Patent ID: 7937336

Claim:
A computer system for generating a decision tree for predicting a geographic location based on an internet protocol (IP) address associated with a user, the computer system comprising: a data store containing a decision tree that is constructed to produce a predicted geographic location for an IP address associated with the user; and a computing device in communication with the data store, wherein the computing device is configured to: obtain a first set of sample data which includes IP addresses and user profile information, wherein the user profile information includes geographic location information correlated with an IP address; train the decision tree with the first set of sample data, wherein the decision tree includes a number of leaf nodes and each leaf node of the decision tree associates at least one IP address and a predicted geographic location; obtain a second set of sample data which includes an IP address and user profile information including geographic location information correlated with an IP address; prune the trained decision tree with the second set of sample data; obtain a third set of sample data which includes IP addresses and user profile information including geographic location information correlated with an IP address; and qualify the decision tree with the third set of sample data, wherein after qualification, each leaf node is assigned a confidence number, wherein the confidence number indicates a degree of accuracy of the predicted geographic location associated with at least one IP address corresponding to the leaf node.