Patent ID: 7028261

Claim:
An internet website computer system which presents a hierarchical menu structure to users, the site having a default menu structure and means to automatically modify the default menu structure for each user over time according to at least that user's previous browsing history at the site, wherein the modifying means dynamically calculates the menu options which appear on a selected menu page m of the menu structure when the user selects that menu page by promoting, as menu options for the selected menu page m, a plurality k of the most probable links which the user may wish to reach from the selected menu page m, subject to any restraints imposed by the site operator or the user, said k most probable links being identified by computing the probabilities of links which were direct or indirect hierarchical descendents of the menu page m in the most recent menu structure, said computation being performed for each branch of the most recent menu structure descending from the menu page m by computing the probability of links at successively lower levels in the branch until the computed probability of the current link is less than the k th best probability found up to that point.