Patent Document ID: 7840524
Application ID: 11404824

Base Claim:
1. A method related to cluster analysis of a world wide web having identifiable web pages and hyperlink relationships made up of Universal Resource Locaters with pointers, wherein objects are related to the world wide web, direct non-semantic relationships relate to hyperlink relationships, and indirect non-semantic relationships relate to a series of hyperlink relationships between objects, comprising: crawling webpages on the world wide web for information used to define a set of objects to be indexed and to collect information about the direct non-semantic relationships, wherein Universal Resource Locators that either point to or point away from one or more of the web pages are crawled; defining the set of objects to be indexed, wherein each object in the set of objects has an identification and wherein a plurality of the objects in the set of objects have direct and indirect non-semantic relationships; generating, using a computer processor, a numerical representation for the set of objects in the form of a series of arrays representing each of said objects in the set of objects based upon each of said object's direct non-semantic relationships, if any, with other of said objects in the set of objects, wherein generating the numerical representation for the set of objects accounts for a plurality of direct non-semantic relationships and includes quantifying the accounted for direct non-semantic relationships, wherein the quantifying includes weighting some of the direct non-semantic relationships differently than others; generating, using a computer processor, a scalar value for each of said objecting the set of objects, wherein said scalar value accounts for direct and indirect non-semantic relationships that exist with other said objects in the set of objects and generating the scalar value includes: quantifying, for each of said objects in the set of objects that has one or more of the indirect non-semantic relationships, said object's indirect non-semantic relationships with other objects in the set of objects, wherein a.) some of the indirect non-semantic relationships contribute greater value to the scalar value than others, b.) a plurality of different types of indirect relationships, when present, contribute to the scalar value, and c.) quantifying said object's indirect non-semantic relationships includes accounting for at least the following three indirect non-semantic relationship patterns for a given object A when present: i) B cites f and f cites A, ii) B cites f, f cites e, and e cites A, and iii) B cites f, f cites e, e cites d, and d cites A, wherein B, d, e, and fare objects in the set of objects and said accounting for indirect non-semantic relationships uses weights that are calculated using one or more of said objects'quantity of outbound direct relationships; storing the generated scalar values in one or more computer memories as an index; receiving search commands wherein the search commands are received from an input device, wherein the received search commands include one or more search terms; identifying a resultant set of said objects that are associated with one or more search terms using at least a word index and the received search commands; determining a rank for objects in the resultant set of objects using said scalar values as a factor in determining the rank; and sending, for use by a display device, information for displaying identities of two or more objects in the resultant set of objects using the rank as a factor in determining an order of display.

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Claim 16:
16. The method of claim 1 wherein quantifying said object's indirect non-semantic relationships further includes weighing, wherein some types of indirect relationships are weighed more heavily than others.