Patent ID: 8015065

Claim:
A computerized method for assigning a monetary value to a search term, the method comprising: electronically, via a processing device, providing at least one first search term to at least one advertiser; electronically, via a processing device, receiving at least one bid from said advertiser on said first search term; electronically, via a processing device, deriving a similarity function between said first term and at least one second term, the second term being a term that has not been bid on, wherein deriving said similarity function comprises: selecting a first set of search engine results for said first term; selecting a second set of search engine results for said second term; comparing said first and second sets of search engine results; selecting a third set of search engine results for a third term, the third term being a term that has been bid on comparing said second and third sets of search engine results; and associating said first term with said second term, in assigning the monetary value to the second term, based on a similarity of the first and second sets of search engine results as compared to a similarity between the second and third sets of search engine results, wherein each search engine result comprises a plurality of uniform resource locators and a similarity between sets of search engine results is determined based on matching at least one identifier associated with each of the uniform resource locators; and electronically, via a processing device, assigning a monetary value to said second term based at least in part on said bid for said first term and said similarity function.