Patent ID: 8065300

Claim:
A method for augmenting business information in a record of a business directory database, the record corresponding to a business and containing data relating to the business including at least a business name, the method comprising: conducting a network search using the business name as a search term; receiving results of the network search including a plurality of URLs; determining confidence measures, each confidence measure being associated with one of the plurality of URLs, each confidence measure indicating a probability that a URL with which the confidence measure is associated is sponsored by the business; selecting a target URL based on a comparison of the confidence measures; conducting, within a domain corresponding to the target URL, a domain search for a match with the data contained in the record of the business directory database; if no match is found in the domain search, selecting a next target URL based on the comparison of the confidence measures, and repeating the conducting a domain search for a match within a domain corresponding to the next target URL; and if a match is found in the domain search, verifying the target URL based on the match; wherein determining confidence measures comprises constructing, for each confidence measure, a finite state machine that is an intersection of a weighted finite state machine encoding the business name and a weighted finite state machine encoding a domain name in the URL with which the confidence measure is associated, and wherein each path of the finite state machine represents a possible string the finite state machine can match, and wherein each path has an associated cost, the cost being inversely related to the likelihood of the path; and after verifying the target URL, adding the target URL to the corresponding business record in the business directory database.