Patent ID: 8166013

Claim:
A system for collecting information from a web page, comprising: a file system; and a processor operatively connected to the file system and having functionality to execute instructions for: obtaining and storing contents of the web page; evaluating the contents to identify a unique identifier within the contents; transforming the contents to a normalized form by analyzing the contents to identify at least one selected from a group consisting of a street name, a street number, a street direction, a house number, a neighborhood, a city name, a state name, a zip code and a point of interest; parsing the normalized form of the contents to identify at least one token, wherein the at least one token comprises a portion of a physical address and an associated telephone number; semantically analyzing, using a plurality of heuristic rules, the at least one token to identify a plurality of possible business identifications; assigning, based on at least the portion of the physical address and the associated telephone number, a plurality of confidence scores to the plurality of possible business identifications; identifying a highest confidence score of the plurality of confidence scores; identifying, in the plurality of possible business identifications, a business identification corresponding to the highest confidence score; mapping the unique identifier to the business identification; extracting, after mapping the unique identifier to the business identification, at least one element from the contents of the web page using an extraction template, the extraction template generated based on a structure of the web page, the at least one element comprising data related to a business identified by the business identification; associating the at least one element related to the business with the business identification; and publishing results of the association of the at least one element with the business identification.