Patent ID: 8260786

Claim:
A method for providing search results to a user, the method executed with a search engine having a processor, comprising: receiving, by the search engine, a first set of information associated with a plurality of web pages ranked according to relevancy; receiving, by the search engine, a second set of information associated with a user preference, wherein the second set of information corresponds to a threshold commercial score value; determining, by the processor, a commercial score for each web page; determining, by the processor, a subset of the first set of information based on the second set of information; generating, by the processor, a visual indicator for at least each web page of the subset of the first set of information that at least meets the threshold commercial score; displaying, by the search engine, the subset and each visual indicator corresponding to each respective web page on a results page of a display; displaying, by the search engine, on the results page a user preference object to collect the second set of information, wherein the user preference object is selectively adjustable by the user to change the user preference according to a level of desired commerciality; wherein the search engine automatically updates the determining the commercial score for each web page, determining the subset, and displaying the subset and each visual indicator when the user changes the second set of information through the user preference object; and wherein determining the commercial score for each web page comprises: determining a transaction score for each web page related to a plurality of criteria based on whether and how strongly each web page facilitates commercial transactions according to respective transactional scores; determining a quality score for each of the subset of the plurality of web pages according to a second plurality of criteria, wherein the second plurality of criteria is different than the plurality of criteria in that the second plurality of criteria is selected from the group consisting of: quality of content, reputation of author or source of the content, and ease of use of the web page; and producing a weighted average of the transaction score and the quality score.