Patent ID: 7499940

Claim:
A method for processing URL information, comprising: at a server: receiving from a requestor a partial URL, the requester located remotely from the server; the receiving including receiving the partial URL from the requestor prior to the requestor performing an action indicating entry of a complete URL that includes the partial URL; obtaining a set of complete URLs corresponding to the partial URL, the complete URLs previously submitted by a community of users using a plurality of client devices; ordering the set of complete URLs in accordance with a ranking criteria; conveying the set as ordered to the requestor; and prior to receiving the partial URL: identifying a set of historical complete URL requests previously submitted by the community of users, each of the complete URLs in the set of historical complete URLs having at least one ranking value associated with the complete URL; and generating a plurality of ordered subsets of the identified set of historical complete URLs, each ordered subset of historical complete URLs including a subset of the identified set of historical complete URLs ordered in accordance with the at least one ranking value associated with the historical complete URLs in the subset; wherein the obtaining includes accessing one of the ordered subsets of historical complete URLs, selected in accordance with the received partial URL.