Patent ID: 7617208

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for identifying improvements for a website by mining user query data, website usage data, and website content and structure associated with the website, the method comprising: classifying documents associated with the website with reference to the website usage data using one or more computing devices configured to classify the documents, thereby resulting in a plurality of document classes, the website usage data corresponding to user interactions with the website recorded in one or more logs associated with the website, the user interactions including document accesses for the documents associated with the website, wherein the plurality of document classes includes a first document class including a first subset of the documents only accessed by browsing during at least one of a plurality of user sessions, and a second document class including a second subset of the documents accessed at least once by one of the queries during at least one of the user sessions, wherein a third subset of the documents is included in both of the first and second subsets; classifying user queries represented in the user query data with reference to the website usage data and the document classes using the one or more computing devices configured to classify the user queries, thereby resulting in a plurality of query classes, the user query data representing user queries recorded in the one or more logs associated with the website that returned search results including one or more of the documents associated with the website, wherein the plurality of query classes includes: a first external query class including first ones of the queries from outside of the website which reached third subset documents, a second external query class including second ones of the queries from outside the website which reached second subset documents not included in the third subset, a first internal query class including third ones of the queries from inside the website which yielded search results which were not selected, a second internal query class including fourth ones of the queries from inside the website which did not yield search results and which represent first concepts present in the website content, and a third internal query class including fifth ones of the queries from inside the website which did not yield search results and which represent second concepts not present in the website content, the second concepts having relevance to the website; and evaluating the user queries associated with at least one of the query classes using the one or more computing devices configured to evaluate the user queries to identify one or more of new anchor text to be included in the website, new content to be included in the website, or new links to be included in the website; and storing the new anchor text, the new content, or the new links in memory associated with the one or more computing devices.