Patent ID: 7774335

Claim:
A method, comprising: one or more computer systems, each comprising at least a processor for performing: determining each of a plurality of navigation paths among a plurality of online content sources; for each of said plurality of navigation paths, determining a respective corresponding path weight, wherein different values of said corresponding path weights are indicative of different levels of user activity along corresponding ones of said navigation paths and wherein said user activity comprises a plurality of requests generated by a plurality of users to access individual ones of said online content sources; and identifying a particular one of a plurality of aggregate paths within said plurality of online content sources, wherein said particular aggregate path includes one or more of said navigation paths, wherein an aggregate path weight corresponding to said particular aggregate path is dependent upon said one or more path weights corresponding to said one or more of said navigation paths included in said particular aggregate path, and wherein said aggregate path weight satisfies an optimization criterion relative to aggregate path weights of other ones of said plurality of aggregate paths within said plurality of online content sources, such that said particular aggregate path is selected from other ones of said aggregate paths dependent upon corresponding path weights of said one or more navigation paths included in said particular aggregate path; wherein a given one of said one or more navigation paths included in said particular aggregate path corresponds to a possible user traversal from a first one of said online content sources to a second one of said online content sources.