Detecting serving area of a web resource
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsXing Xie, Lee Wang, Qi Zhang, Wei-Ying Ma
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods and systems for determining the serving area of a web resource by address, by query content, and by business category are provided. A location system may determine the serving area of a web resource based on addresses of users who access the web resource. The location system may determine the serving area for a web site (or other web resource) based on query terms that resulted in a click-through to the web site. The location system may determine the serving area of a web site (or other web resource) based on the business category of the web site and a “provider location” associated with the web site.
Claims19
A computer system for determining a serving area of a web resource based on addresses of users, the serving area representing a geographic area that is a reach of the web resource, comprising:
- an access information store that includes, for each access of the web resource, the address of the user who accessed the web resource;
- an address mapping component that maps an address of the access information to a location within a hierarchy of locations;
- and
- an identification component that identifies a location of the hierarchy as a serving area of the web resource based on the number of accesses of the web resource by users within that location and based on the spread of the number of accesses of the web resource by users within locations that are hierarchically within the location.
A method in a computing device for determining a serving area of a web resource based on addresses of users, the serving area representing a geographic area that is a reach of the web resource, the method comprising:
- providing an access information store with access information that includes, for accesses of the web resource, the addresses of the user who accessed the web resource;
- providing an address mapping that maps an address of the access information to a geographic location within a hierarchy of locations;
- identifying by the computing device a geographic location of the hierarchy based on the number of accesses of the web resource by users within that location and based on the spread of the number of accesses of the web resource by users within locations that are hierarchically within the location, the spread representing the distribution of accesses among child locations of a certain location as indicated by the hierarchy of locations;
- and
- designating the identified geographic location as the serving area of the web resource.
A computer-readable storage medium for controlling a computing device to determine a serving area of a web resource based on IP addresses of users, the serving area representing the geographic area that is a reach of the web resource, by a method comprising:
- providing an access information store with access information that includes, for each access of the web resource, the IP address of the user who accessed the web resource, the IP addresses being derived from a click-through log indicating accesses to the web resource;
- providing an IP mapping that maps IP addresses to geographic locations within a hierarchy of locations;
- determining the geographic locations of the IP addresses associated with the accesses to the web resource using the provided IP mapping;
- identifying a geographic location of the hierarchy based on the ratio of the access rate of the determined geographic locations to the access rate of parent locations of the determined geographic locations and based on the spread of the number of accesses of the web resource by users within the geographic locations that are hierarchically within the determined geographic location, the spread representing the distribution of accesses among child locations in a certain location as indicated by the hierarchy of locations;
- and
- designating the identified geographic location as the serving area of the web resource.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.