Patent ID: 7289967

Claim:
A method of updating information maintained at an intermediary web site on a computer network about items being auctioned at a plurality of remotely located auction sites on the computer network, wherein the updated information is displayable to users accessing the intermediary web site via the computer network, the method comprising: obtaining auction item data that has changed since a previous time for auctions currently being conducted at the respective auction sites, wherein each auction site includes a data engine that is configured to obtain data about each item currently being auctioned at the respective auction site, and wherein the intermediary web site includes an agent that is configured to communicate with and retrieve auction item data from each auction site data engine, comprising: establishing a TCP/IP connection between the agent and each respective data engine; and sending an HTTP request from the agent to each respective data engine via the TCP/IP connection to obtain auction item data that has changed since a previous time; extracting keywords from the obtained auction item data via the agent; and storing the extracted keywords via the agent, wherein each stored keyword is associated with an item currently being auctioned at a respective one of the plurality of remotely located auction sites, and wherein the stored keywords are searchable by users accessing the intermediary web site.