Patent ID: 6848075

Claim:
A method for operating a computer to display historical information about hyperlinks shown on web pages, the method comprising the following operations performed by the computer: responsive to receiving user instructions to download a web page, commencing downloading of the web page; identifying any hyperlinks present in the web page; for each identified hyperlink, analyzing the hyperlink by performing steps comprising: determining whether one or more users in a predefined access group have previously selected the identified hyperlink to download underlying data represented by the hyperlink; only if one or more users in the predefined access group have previously selected the hyperlink, consulting a database to identify characteristics of the underlying data obtained from previous selections of the hyperlink by users in the access group; referencing the identified characteristics against a presentation table to derive enhanced presentation attributes appropriate to the hyperlink; displaying the downloaded web page, including presenting each hyperlink with its derived enhanced presentation attributes; and responsive to the user selecting a hyperlink to download underlying data represented by the hyperlink, the computer downloading the underlying data represented by the hyperlink, and recording predetermined characteristics of the underlying data in the database.