Patent ID: 7685074

Claim:
A data mining method, comprising: by a computer system that comprises one or more machines: maintaining, in computer storage, session records of a plurality of users of an electronic catalog of items, said session records identifying catalog items selected by users for viewing within corresponding user sessions, said session records maintained by said computer system without requiring the users to explicitly create lists of items, wherein maintaining said session records comprises monitoring user accesses to item detail pages, each of which predominantly contains information about one particular catalog item, to thereby identify particular catalog items selected by users for viewing in said electronic catalog; programmatically analyzing the session records to generate data values reflective of item co-occurrences within the session records, each data value corresponding to a respective pair of catalog items and representing a strength of a relationship between the two catalog items of said pair, each data value being dependent upon a number of said user sessions in which the item detail paces of both catalog items of the respective pair were accessed; generating a data structure that associates particular catalog items with corresponding sets of related catalog items, wherein the data structure is generated based, at least in-part, on said data values; and for each of a plurality of catalog items, using said data structure to supplement a corresponding item detail pace of the electronic catalog with a notification of other catalog items that are viewed by users who view the respective catalog item.