US 7,668,821 B1Granted

Recommendations based on item tagging activities of users

AssigneeAmazon Technologies, Inc.

InventorsAaron Donsbach, Andrej Gregov, Jeffrey D. Few, Jeffrey D. Lehman, Jeffrey T. Brownell

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Abstract

A system provides a user interface through which users can flexibly tag individual items represented in an electronic catalog with user-defined tags, such as text strings, and obtain recommendations that are specific to particular tags. The tags and tag-item assignments created by each user are stored persistently in association with the user, and may be kept private to the user or exposed to others. Once a user has assigned a tag to a number of items, the user (or another user in some embodiments) can request and obtain recommendations that are specific to this tag. These recommendations may be generated in real time by a recommendation service that identifies items that are collectively similar or related to the items associated with the tag.

Claims22

Dependent claims

A computing system, comprising:

an interactive system that comprises one or more machines that are remotely accessible to user computing devices via a network, said one or more machines programmed to provide:
an interactive catalog of items, the interactive catalog comprising a plurality of item detail pages, each of the item detail pages comprising information descriptive of a particular item in the interactive catalog;
a tagging interface that provides functionality for a user of the interactive catalog to create tags for classifying items represented in the interactive catalog of items, and to associate particular tags with particular items in the interactive catalog, the tagging interface comprising tag entry fields provided on at least some of the item detail pages of the interactive catalog, the tagging interface enabling the user to create tags via entry of text strings into the tag entry fields;
a data repository that persistently stores tag data of the user, the tag data specifying tags and tag-item associations created by the user via the tagging interface;
a search engine system comprising a tag keyword index, the search engine system operative to provide functionality for the user to conduct keyword searches of said tag data to locate items in the interactive catalog based at least in part on the information stored in the tag keyword index, the search engine system operative to return a list comprising items tagged by the user in response to a keyword search conducted by the user;
a recommendation system that provides customized item recommendations to the user based on information known about the user;
and
a user interface that displays to the user a list of tags created by the user, and is responsive to the user selecting one or more selected tags from said list by invoking the recommendation system to generate, and provide to the user, item recommendations comprising additional items that are related to items the user has associated with the one or more selected tags.

5 more elements

A computer-implemented method of providing item recommendations to users, comprising:

providing a tagging interface that provides functionality for a user of an interactive catalog to create tags for classifying items represented in the interactive catalog via entry of text strings into tag fields of corresponding item detail pages, the tagging interface thereby enabling the user to create tags that describe items represented on particular item details page of the interactive catalog;
persistently storing tag data of the user in a data repository, the tag data specifying tags and tag-item associations created by the user via the tagging interface;
providing functionality for the user to conduct keyword searches of said tag data to locate items in the interactive catalog based at least in part on information stored in a tag keyword index of a search engine;
returning a list from the search engine in response to a keyword search conducted by the user;
providing a user interface that displays to a user a list of tags created by the user;
in response to the user selecting a tag from said list, programmatically invoking a recommendations system comprising computer hardware to identify a plurality of items associated with the tag;
for each of the plurality of items associated with the tag, identifying a corresponding set of related items at least in part by accessing item-to-item similarity mappings represented in a computer memory;
combining the sets of related items to generate a combined set of related items;
and
selecting at least a portion of the combined set of related items to recommend to the user in association with said tag, such that the related items comprise personalized, tag-specific item recommendations.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.