Patent ID: 8898161

Claim:
A central system for improving rankings of network resources comprising: a processor; tangible, non-transitory media that stores a program that when executed by the processor is configured to perform operations comprising: offering a plurality of end users a reward to receive instructions at their respective computing devices; receiving consent from at least a portion of the plurality of end users to receive instructions at their respective computing devices; storing in memory a record of the received consent; causing a user interface to be displayed on at least some of the respective computing devices that enables the end users of the respective computing devices to provide at least one of timing preferences or computing device utilization preferences with respect to selective execution of instructions, wherein the timing preferences indicate at least one of when or how often the operations are permitted to be performed, and wherein the computing device utilization preferences indicate that the operations are permitted to be performed when the computing device is at a specified level of utilization; receiving a request from a merchant to improve a ranking in a search engine search result of a network resource associated with the merchant; partly in response to the received consent, transmitting instructions to a plurality of nodes in response to the received request to improve ranking, the plurality of nodes including the respective computing devices associated with the at least a portion of the end users from whom consent to receive instructions was received, wherein the instructions cause the plurality of nodes to perform operations in a manner that appears random to the search engine, with respect to one another, by causing the plurality of nodes to perform the operations at random times and with a specified frequency when the preferences provided by the end users of the respective computing devices are met; the operations comprising: automatically issuing search requests associated with the network resource to the search engine, and at least one of activating links in search results provided by the search engine associated with the network resource and issuing uniform resource locator (URL) requests associated with the network resource in the background without displaying the results of the search requests, link activations and URL requests; storing in memory an indication that the plurality of nodes has issued the search requests, activated links in search results and issued URL requests associated with the network resource; managing provision of the reward in accordance with the received consent; and issuing a report over a network to the merchant that provides the number of times the plurality of nodes issued search requests, activated links and issued URL requests.