Patent Document ID: 9588580
Application ID: 13632811
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A system for aiding a user in making decisions with respect to products and services listed on the Internet comprising: a. a remote access device configured to permit the user to input data and review results; b. a server in communication with the remote access device and the Internet, said server programmed to: i) capture user preferences input through the remote access device, the user preferences comprising level of importance designations for a plurality of criteria within a plurality of categories for a single-product domain, wherein each category is classified as a want or a need, the level of importance designations being selectable by the user to designate each of the criteria in a manner that provides binary certainty, the binary certainty having a first test being whether each of the criteria is not important or has importance, and having a second test applicable to any criteria that has importance being whether each of the criteria is less important or more important; ii) calculate an overall stated importance for each category based on the level of importance designations for each of the criteria within the respective category; iii) return a set of single-product domain results, via a neural network engine, in an order determined by performing steps comprising: a) designating a degree-of-fit for a plurality of provider offerings of the single-product domain, the degree of fit being determined based on pre-determined but non-static fit percentage thresholds, and the degree of fit designation indicates whether each provider is most relevant, relevant, or less relevant; b) devaluing the degree-of-fit for any provider offering for which the percentage calculation for a category classified as a need is below a pre-determined need percentage threshold and the overall stated importance designation indicates high importance, such that a provider offering designated a Most Relevant status prior to devaluation is demoted to the status of Relevant, and a provider that designated as a Relevant status prior to devaluation is demoted the status of Of Interest; iv) return a set of multi-product domain results, via the neural network engine, in an order determined by performing steps comprising: a) defining the criteria selected by the user under the first test of the binary certainty as being user-selected criteria; b) mapping the user-selected criteria to a superset of products in an ontological schema of the system to produce a subset of potential relevant products, wherein the ontological schema is structured such that each criteria and each product are classified by a set of identifiers, and where there are instances of user-selected criteria having a set of identifiers that mathematically ensures a subset of the set of products is generated by the system; v) display the returned sets of provider results for the single-product domain and the multi-product domain on the remote access device.