Patent ID: 7287042

Claim:
A method of processing URL request messages from user computing devices, the method comprising: receiving a URL request from a user computing device, the URL request specifying a URL that includes a domain name, followed immediately by a forward slash, followed immediately by a character string; determining whether the character string includes a predefined prefix that identifies the URL as a non-search-request URL, wherein a non-search-request URL is a URL in which the character string is not a search string for executing a search; when the character string includes a predefined prefix that identifies the URL as a non-search-request URL, retrieving content referenced by the URL, and returning the content to the user computing device in response to the URL request; and when the character string does not include a predefined prefix that identifies the URL as a non-search-request URL, executing a search in which the character string is used in its entirety as a search string, and returning results of the search to the user computing device in response to the URL request.