Patent ID: 7451388

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for randomly walking through a hyper-text-linked document set comprising a plurality of documents, wherein at least a subset of the documents contain a plurality of links to other documents, each document being associated with a host, the method comprising: a) selecting a host: b) selecting at random a document associated with the host; c) retrieving the selected document; d) randomly choosing whether to select a random new document; e) responsive to choosing to select the random new document: e.1) selecting at random a new host from among the previously selected hosts; e.2) selecting at random a new document associated with the new host; and e.3) retrieving the selected new document; f) responsive to choosing not to select the random new document: f.1) selecting at random a link in the retrieved document; and f.2) retrieving a document referenced by the selected link; and g) repeating d), and then conditionally repeating e) or f) depending upon the choosing made in d).