Patent ID: 8090766

Claim:
A computerized method for identifying, referring, and auditing providers of configurable computer-related goods and services, the method comprising: receiving and storing information about plural providers of configurable computer-related goods and services, the information comprising provider names, provider URLs, geographical areas in which providers provide configurables, and descriptions of configurables available from providers; receiving a request from a computer, the request comprising a geographic location of the computer; searching the stored information about providers in order to identify a list of providers or provider servers that provide automatic configuring of configurables in the geographic area; sending the list of providers or provider servers to the computer, the list including provider names, provider URLs, and descriptions of configurables available from the providers or provider servers in the list; receiving auditing information from the computer comprising an indication of a provider or provider server selected from the list, an indication of a selected configurable, and an indication that the selected configurable has become operational on the computer, and an amount of time from when the selected configurable was selected until when the selected configurable became operational on the computer, wherein the amount of time comprises one or more update periods indicating a length of time between the computer receiving an IP address from the selected provider and updating a server with the IP address; and based at least in part on the received amount of time, sending to the computer a query message to be displayed at the computer, the query message comprising an explicit offer to change to another configurable from a different provider.