HK1115770B

HK1115770B - Content-management system for user behavior targeting

Info

Publication number: HK1115770B
Application number: HK08105803.8A
Authority: HK
Inventors: 洪彻．刘; 安那德．马达万
Original assignee: Jollify Management Limited
Priority date: 2004-06-02
Filing date: 2005-06-02
Publication date: 2010-06-04

Description

Content management system for targeting user behavior

Cross Reference to Related Applications

This patent application claims priority from U.S. provisional patent application No.60/576,735 entitled "connect-MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR USER boiler target", filed 6/2/2004, and is a continuation-in-part application from U.S. patent application No.11/130,592 entitled "connect-MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR USER boiler target acquisition", filed 5/16/2005, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety FOR all purposes.

Technical Field

The present invention relates generally to content management and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for associating user behavior with content related to the user behavior to present the related content to the user.

Background

In a typical content management system, a user makes a request for primary content and receives the primary content with additional content that may or may not be relevant to the user. The base content may include a web page accessed by the user and may be provided to the user's client system in the form of a set of search results provided by a search engine. The additional content may include advertisements or the like placed on the accessed web page by an advertisement server or the like. Additional content is typically displayed on the accessed page in the form of a banner ad that includes a link to the advertiser's website.

A content management system configured to provide basic content and additional content is commonly used. One content management system in common use today is referred to as the internet, which is a global internetwork in which network nodes send requests to other nodes that may respond to basic content requested by a user, with additional content attached. One protocol available to content management systems is the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), where an HTTP client, such as a browser, makes requests for base content located by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and an HTTP server responds to the requests by sending the content specified by the URL. Of course, this is only a very general example, and content retrieval is not limited thereto.

For example, networks other than the Internet may be used, such as token Ring, WAP (Wireless application protocol) networks, overlay networks, peer-to-peer networks, private networks, and so forth. Protocols other than HTTP may be used to request and transfer content, such as SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol), FTP (file transfer protocol), etc., and content may be specified by other identifiers than URLs. Some portions of the present invention are described with reference to the internet, a worldwide internetwork of networks that is common in various applications today, but it should be understood that references to the internet may instead be made to variations of the internet basic concept (e.g., intranets, virtual private networks, embedded TCP/IP (encapsulated TCP/IP) networks, etc.) as well as other forms of networks. It should also be appreciated that the present invention may operate entirely within one computer or one collection of computers, thereby obviating the need for a network.

The requested base content and related content may take many forms. For example, some content may be text, images, video, audio, animation, program code, data structures, formatted text, and so forth. The base content and related content may be provided on a web page and may be formatted according to any of a variety of web page protocols, such as hypertext markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML), Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), or other languages as are now available.

HTML is a common format for pages or other content served from HTTP servers. Content formatted in HTML may include links to other HTML content, and the collection of content that locates other content may be viewed as a document web, hence assigning an example name for the collection of HTML-formatted content: the "world Wide Web" or "WWW". Since this is a well-known structure, it is used here for many examples, but it should be understood that the concepts described by these examples are not limited to WWW, HTML, HTTP, the internet, etc., unless specified otherwise.

The provider of the base content may determine the subject matter of the base content and/or the interests of the user and provide additional content related to the base content and/or the interests of the user. In determining relevant content, the primary content provider may maximize profit, for example, by providing advertisements that may be of interest to the user and collecting fees from advertisers to display the advertisers' advertisements. Accurately determining content relevant to a user is a continuing and expensive problem. One method used to determine and provide content relevant to a user is to manually establish a predetermined association between the user's user profile (profile) and the relevant content. Typically, the predetermined associations are manually generated by a person viewing the content and a user profile to determine the relevant associations. This method of generating an association between a user and related content includes a number of problems because users are often unwilling and resistant to providing personal information, users fear that his or her personal information is enjoyed (or sold) by people who may use the personal information without caution. Even when the user does provide personal information, the information can only provide a static user interest for a while. This information generally does not relate to the user's changing interests unless it is possible to obtain them through heavy work (heavy for both the information requester and the user) to periodically request and provide new personal information.

Another common method for associating relevant content with a user is to use usage demographic information that is targeted to the user, which is often accompanied by inaccuracies. While demographic targeting may provide somewhat relevant general information, this information may not be fine enough for personally targeted advertisements in a user's demographic. Like user-provided profiles, once a demographic study is concluded, demographic information suffers fates that become obsolete because the generated demographic data generally does not change as the user's interests change. This is especially true for interests that change day-by-day or even hour-by-hour.

There is a need for an improved content management system for generating user profiles that remain up-to-date with the user's changing interests and associate the interests with relevant content that is provided to the user in a timely manner.

Disclosure of Invention

The content management system according to the embodiment of the present invention associates the basic content and the related content. If the relevant content is relevant to the user, or more specifically, if the units in the user profile made up of one or more keywords match the units associated with the relevant content, the base content may be provided to the user browser along with the relevant content.

According to one embodiment, a content management system is configured to provide primary content and related content to a user system based on an association of a user profile and the related content, wherein the related content is related to a user. The system comprises: a plurality of web servers configured to provide the base content and the related content to the user system; a set of additional content servers configured to provide the relevant content to the web server if a cell in the user profile matches a cell associated with the relevant content; a parsing server configured to extract units in the user profile from the base content requested by the user and generate a hierarchical list of units in the user profile; and a unit matching module configured to determine if a unit in the user profile matches a unit associated with the related content if the user requests the base content, wherein the web server is configured to provide the base content and the related content if a unit in the user profile matches a unit associated with the related content. According to a particular embodiment, the resolution server comprises: a parsing module configured to parse the base content to generate parsed base content; a unit extraction module configured to extract units in the user profile from the parsed base content; and a unit ranking module configured to generate a ranked list of units in the user profile. The base content may include content of at least one web page.

According to another embodiment, the system is configured to associate a user profile with related content. The system comprises: a parsing module configured to parse the base content requested by the user and generate parsed base content; a unit dictionary module comprising a plurality of units; a unit extracting module configured to extract a unit included in the unit dictionary from the parsed basic content, the unit extracted from the parsed basic content being referred to as an extracting unit; a unit ranking module configured to rank the extraction units based on at least one of relevance scores and revenue generation amounts respectively associated with the extraction units, and generate a ranked list of extraction units; a user profile associated with a user and including the ranked list; and a unit matching module configured to generate an association between the user profile and the related content if an extraction unit in the ranked list matches a unit associated with the related content. The unit matching module may be configured to generate an association between the base content and the related content if a highest ranked extraction unit matches or is in the same set of related units as at least one of the units associated with the related content. The related content may include an advertisement or may be pointed to by a set of links. The link may include at least one of a sponsor link, an integrated link, and an internal link.

According to another embodiment, the system is configured to provide the primary content to the user system along with the related content to correlate the related content with the user. The system comprises: a plurality of web servers configured to provide base content and related content; a parsing server configured to generate a user profile of the unit based on the basic content requested by the user; a unit matching module configured to generate an association between the user profile and the related content if at least one unit in the user profile matches a unit associated with the related content; and a user system configured to receive the base content and the related content provided by the at least one web server and publish the base content and the related content on a web page based on the association.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a method for providing related content and web content related to a user, the method including: requesting primary content from a computer network; extracting a set of units from the base content, said units being referred to as extraction units; assigning relevance scores and revenue generation amounts to the extraction units, respectively; ranking the extraction units based on at least one of the relevance scores and the revenue generation amounts; and forming a user profile comprising a ranked list of extraction units, the relevance scores and the revenue generation amounts. According to a particular embodiment, the method further comprises parsing the base content to generate parsed base content, wherein the step of extracting a set of units from the base content comprises extracting the set of units from the parsed base content. According to a particular embodiment, the method further comprises storing the user profile in a user behavior database.

According to another embodiment, a method for providing related content and web content related to a user is provided. The method comprises the following steps: requesting primary content from a computer network; and providing the web content with the related content if the at least one element in the user profile matches the at least one element associated with the related content and if the user requests the web content. Web content includes private content and public content. The private content may include at least one of an email and a chat room discussion.

Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description and the accompanying drawings.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a diagram of an information retrieval and communication network including a client system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 2 is a diagram of a content management system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 3 is an exemplary user profile that may be generated by a unit-ranking module and stored in a user behavior database according to one embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 4A is an exemplary user profile that may be generated by the unit ranking module and stored in the user behavior database according to another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4B is an example of a user profile that may be generated by the unit ranking module and stored in the user behavior database, according to another embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 5 is an exemplary web page that may be published on a display of a customer selection system and that includes base content and related content, according to one embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 6 is a high level flow chart having steps for forming a user profile based on web pages viewed by a user in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a high level flow chart having steps for providing web content and related content related to a user based on a web page viewed by the user in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 8 is a simplified illustration of a content management system including a unit-taxonomy scheme in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a simplified illustration of the "tree" structure of the unit classification system.

Fig. 10 is a diagram of a content management system according to another embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described by way of example and not by way of limitation. It will be appreciated that the invention has broad utility and can be used in many different contexts.

Embodiments of the present invention provide a user with base content via the user's client system and, along with the base content, additional content related to the user. The base content generally includes content requested by the user and may be provided on a web page accessed by the user via the user's client system. The base content may also include a web page that publishes the requested content. The additional content may include advertisements and/or links to content placed on the accessed web page. The additional content may be considered relevant to the user if the additional content is substantially similar to attributes of a user profile associated with the user. The attributes may include keywords, units, categories, etc. identified in the query by the user for querying the document corpus and search results returned to the user. The additional content may be substantially similar to the user profile if it includes or is associated with the same or similar keywords, units, categories, etc. as included in the user profile. These and other embodiments of the invention are described in more detail below. For convenience, an apparatus configured to associate base content with additional content related to a user (sometimes simply referred to as related content) is described first, followed by a description of a method for associating the base content with the additional content related to the user.

FIG. 1 is a simplified illustration of an information retrieval and communication network 10 including a client system 20 according to an embodiment of the present invention. In communication network 10, client system 20 is coupled to any number of server systems 40 via a network 30, such as the Internet or an intranet (e.g., LAN or WAN)₁To 40_N. As described herein, client system 20 is configured in accordance with the present invention to communicate with server system 40₁To 40_NTo access, receive, retrieve, and display the base content and associated related content in the form of web pages, for example.

Several of the elements of the system shown in fig. 1 include conventionally known elements and need not be described in detail herein. For example, client system 20 may include a desktop personal computer, workstation, laptop, PDA, cellular telephone, any Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled device, or any other computing device capable of interfacing directly or indirectly to the Internet. Client system 20 typically runs a browsing program, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer^TMBrowser, netscape navigator^TMBrowser, Mozilla^TMBrowser, Opera^TMBrowser, WAP-enabled browser in the case of a cellular telephone, PDA, or other wireless device, to allow a user of client system 20 to access, process, and view data from server system 40 over network 30₁To 40_NOf its available content. Client system 20 may also include one or more user interface devices 22, such as a keyboard, mouse, trackball, touch screen, stylus, and the like, for interfacing with server system 40₁To 40_NOr other server-provided pages, forms, and other information, to interact with a browser-provided Graphical User Interface (GUI) on a display (e.g., monitor screen, LCD display, etc.). The present invention is suitable for use with the internet (which refers to a particular global internetwork). It should be understood, however,other networks may be used in place of or in addition to the internet, such as an intranet, an extranet, a Virtual Private Network (VPN), a non-TCP/IP based network, any LAN or WAN, and so forth.

According to one embodiment, client system 20 and system server 40₁To 40_NAnd their respective components are operators configurable using an application including computer code running using one or more central processing units (e.g., central processing units manufactured by Intel, AMD, etc.). Computer code for operating and configuring client system 20 to transfer, process and display the primary content and content associated with the primary content as described herein is preferably downloaded and stored on a hard disk, but the entire program code, or portions thereof, may also be stored on any other known volatile or non-volatile storage medium or device, such as a ROM or RAM, or provided on any medium capable of storing program code, such as a Compact Disk (CD) medium, a Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) medium, a floppy disk, and the like. In addition, the entire program code, or portions thereof, may be transmitted and downloaded from a software source, such as from server system 40 over network 30 using communication media and protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet, or other conventional media and protocols)₁To 40_NOne of which is sent and downloaded to client system 20. A server system, as referred to herein, may include a single server computer or a plurality of server computers.

It should be appreciated that the computer code for implementing various aspects of the present invention may be C, C + +, HTML, XML, Java, JavaScript, etc. code, or any other suitable scripting language (e.g., VBScript), or any other code that may be available at client system 20 and/or server 40₁To 40_NTo be executed or compiled at client system 20 and/or server 40₁To 40_NIn a suitable programming language. In some embodiments, no code is downloaded to client system 20, and the required code is executed by a server, or code already present on client system 20 is executed.

FIG. 2Is a simplified illustration of a content management system 200 according to an embodiment of the present invention. Various portions of the content management system may reside on one or more servers (e.g., server 40)₁To 40_N) And/or in one or more client systems (e.g., client system 20). Modules of the content management system may be communicated between one or more server and client systems over a network (e.g., network 30) for execution. According to one embodiment, the content management system 200 includes a plurality of web servers 205, a resolution server 210, a set of additional content servers 215, and a user behavior database 220. A group as referred to herein comprises one or more members.

According to one embodiment, the content management system 200 is configured to generate a user profile 225 for a user and associate the user profile with additional content 230 related to the user, the additional content 230 being provided to the user with a piece of content such as base content 235, email, chat room discussions, and the like. The user profile may be generated based on a web page requested by the user, a query used to identify the web page, and so on. The user profile may include units (comprised of one or more keywords, described in detail later) extracted from the pages and/or queries and may include category information used to categorize the units. The user profile may be associated with a piece of additional content based on whether units included in the user profile are the same or similar to units included in the additional content, or based on whether categories used to classify the units are the same or similar. The user profile may be associated with the additional content if the units in the user profile substantially match or are in the same unit category as the additional content. The association between the user profile and the additional content may be formed in response to a user request for the base content or in response to another triggering event. If an association is formed, the additional content may be provided with the base content.

For convenience, the generation of the user profile is first described below, followed by the association of the user profile with the additional content and the association of the additional content with a piece of base content or the likeThe aspects provided with his content are described together. The user profile may be generated based on tracking and parsing the base content requested by the user. Units may be extracted from the base content and placed in a user profile to create a profile. Elements that can be placed in a user profile may also be accessed from the user, for example, using Overture^TMExtracted from the executed search query. Units may also be collected from "associated" content associated with the primary content. The primary content may be a piece of primary content of primary interest to the user, such as music, news, TV listings, books, art, and so forth. The associated content may be associated with the primary content based on actions of other users or based on logical associations. For example, in a search, a user may be searching for music by a given artist. The given artist may be the main theme or the music of the given artist may be the main theme. It may be known that a user who purchased music by the given artist also purchased a few specific pieces of music by another artist. Music by this other artist is an example of associated content because it is associated with a purchase of music (e.g., also primary content) by a given artist (e.g., primary content). Units associated with music of another artist (e.g., title) and/or music of the other artist (e.g., music title, CD title, etc.) may be included in the user profile.

Base content 235 may include web pages provided to client system 20 by one or more web servers 205 or other servers. The web pages may be provided according to a variety of web-based protocols, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, or other protocols in use today. Server system 40₁To 40_NMay be configured to provide web pages and may include a web server 205. The Web server may include a Yahoo! Entity (property) servers, such as Yahoo! Launch, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! Health, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Weather or other web server. The web server may reside on a single server computer, or on multiple server computers. The primary content 235 may also include on-web pagesContent such as text, images, video, audio, animation, program code, data structures, formatted text, and the like. For example, the underlying content provided by a News server (e.g., Yahoo | News) may include News stories (text) and accompanying images. The base content may be formatted according to hypertext markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML), Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), or other formats in use today.

According to one embodiment, the base content 235 requested by the user is provided to the resolution server 210 by at least one of the web servers 205. Alternatively, the web server may provide the URL to the resolution server; the URL may be targeted to the requested primary content. The resolution server may be configured to retrieve the primary content pointed to by the URL using the URL. The base content may be provided to the parsing server in the form of an HTML page, an XML page, or other formats used today. The web server 205 may also provide one or more configuration files 240 to the resolution server. Each configuration file 240 includes a set of rules that web page parser 245 uses to set the priority of the base content parsing. Each profile may include a unique set of parsing rules associated with the web server providing the rules. For example, a News entity (e.g., a Yahoo | News entity) may provide rules for parsing the title of a News article, while a Music entity (e.g., a Yahoo | Music entity) may not provide rules for parsing the title of a News article. Alternatively, the music entity may include rules for parsing titles of CDs, which are more relevant to the music entity than news article titles. An exemplary set of parsing rules (e.g., for a news entity) may include parsing a title, metadata keywords, metadata descriptions, bold text, italic text, proper nouns, anchor text, body text, and text characterized as important text. During the parsing process, all HTML tags and the like and other unwanted information may be deleted from a piece of base content and the preceding text categories parsed from the base content. For example, a body text parsing rule may provide for parsing of the first or first two paragraphs of an article, and may specify that subsequent paragraphs are not to be parsed. According to another example, the text characterized as important text to be parsed from the web page may be web server specific (e.g., entity server). Such as, for example, Yahoo! Sports entities, such as Sports entities, may include rules that consider the name of a Sports team as important text, while movie entities may include rules that consider a movie title as important text. For base content that is not provided with a configuration file, for example, Yahoo! Base content not provided by the entity server, which may be parsed according to one or more sets of default rules that may be stored locally in web page parser 245.

According to one embodiment, after parsing the base content, the extraction module 250 extracts units from the parsed base content. A unit may include one or more keywords and generally represents a single concept, e.g., a single concept that is complete to human thinking. That is, keywords in a unit will represent a concept, rather than several concepts that the keywords may represent individually or in different groups. . For example, the three keywords "New", "York" and "City" may constitute a unit "New York City", where the unit is not considered as three separate keywords (and possibly three or more different concepts), but rather is considered as a single keyword, or "unit", for example, representing a single concept. The concept of the unit "New York City" is generally closer to the natural thinking process than the concept of three keywords considered separately. For example, the keyword York considered separately may be associated with the York town of Great Britain, or the keyword New York considered together may be associated with the State of New York rather than necessarily the City of New York.

Units may be extracted from the parsed text by extraction module 250 based on a set of units in unit dictionary module 255. Unit dictionary module 255 may include a list of all units that may be extracted from the parsed text. The units in the unit dictionary module may include one or more keywords. The unit dictionary module may be provided by query processing engine 260. The query processing engine 260 may be configured to receive a plurality of keywords and form units from the keywords. The query processing engine may be configured to recognize that: a single key may itself be a unit without being combined with other keys to form a unit. Although the query processing engine is shown in FIG. 2 as a module that is not included in the resolution server 210, the query processing engine may be included in the resolution server according to some embodiments. For a more detailed understanding of the query processing engine 260, see U.S. patent application No.10/713,576, entitled "System and Methods for Generating Concept Units from search Queries," filed 11/12 2003, which is owned by the owner of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.

Units may be periodically added to or deleted from the unit dictionary module, for example, when units and/or keywords are sold to advertisers and/or sponsors. For example, if one or more particular units are in a piece of base content, advertisers may want their advertisements displayed with this piece of base content. Alternatively, if one or more particular units are in a piece of base content, the sponsor may wish to have a link to their website displayed with this piece of base content. Advertisers, sponsors, etc. may then "purchase" the unit to place the advertisement or sponsor link with the base content on the web page. Furthermore, advertisers, sponsors, etc. may even pay a fee each time the unit appears in a piece of base content and the advertiser's advertisement or sponsor's link is displayed with the base content. If the user selects (or "clicks") on an advertisement or sponsor link, a premium may also be charged to the advertiser or sponsor.

For example, additional cell extraction rules may be provided to the extraction module by an entity server (e.g., a Yahoo | entity server). These unit extraction rules may specify that units not included in the unit dictionary module are extracted, or may specify that, while some given units are in the unit dictionary module, these given units should not be extracted from the parsed text. The unit extraction rules may include rules for extracting a unit based on the revenue generation amount associated with the unit. For example, if a unit included in the unit dictionary module has not been sold and does not have an associated revenue generation amount, the unit extraction rules may specify that the unit is not to be extracted from the parsed text. According to another example, the revenue generation rules may specify that the unit with the highest revenue generation amount is to be extracted. Various entity servers may provide different sets of unit extraction rules. It should be understood that the above unit extraction rules are exemplary and not limiting. One skilled in the art will appreciate that other useful extraction rules may be included in the set of unit extraction rules.

Although the foregoing embodiment specifies the extraction unit from the basic content, keywords may be extracted from the basic content based on a set of keyword extraction rules. Similar to the unit extraction rules, the keyword extraction rules may be provided to parsing modules in one or more configuration files 240. Keyword extraction rules may be applied consistently to all parsed text, or the rules may be applied to base content provided by a given web server, and may not be applied to base content provided by other web servers. For example, a set of keyword extraction rules may be applied to the Yahoo! Basic content provided by Music entity, and another different set of extraction rules may be applied to Yahoo! Basic content provided by the News entity. The keyword extraction rules may include a variety of rules, such as those described above in describing unit extraction rules or may contain other extraction rules.

After units 265 (comprising a single keyword unit or multiple keyword units) are extracted from the parsed base text, the units are passed to a unit ranking module 272, which unit ranking module 272 is configured to rank the units. Units may be ranked based on a number of criteria, including, for example, revenue generation amounts and/or relevance scores associated with the units. The amount of revenue generated by a unit may be based on the amount that subscribers, advertisers, sponsors, etc. wish (e.g., agree to) pay for their related content to be presented to the user along with a piece of base content. For example, a light truck manufacturer may purchase/license the following units: "truck", "pick-up truck", and "light duty truck". The unit "light-duty truck" may be highly correlated with the type of truck produced by the manufacturer, while the units "pick-up truck" and "truck" may be less correlated. Thus, manufacturers typically pay a greater fee for their advertisements (i.e., related content) placed next to the primary content that includes the unit "light-duty truck" than for advertisements placed next to the primary content having the unit "pick-up truck" or "truck". Therefore, the revenue generation amounts of the units "pick-up truck" and "truck" are lower than the revenue generation amount of the unit "light-duty truck".

The relevance score indicates the degree of relevance between the unit and the user. A unit may be determined to have a relatively high relevance to the user if it appears more than a given number of times in a piece of requested content or in a query used by the user to locate content. For example, if a user requests a larger volume of news articles (e.g., web pages with articles about new pages) that include the element "light-duty truck," it may be determined that the element "light-duty truck" is highly relevant to the user. It can be inferred that the user is interested in purchasing a light truck. Thus, the relevance score for the unit may be relatively high for the user.

Relevance scores for units may also be based on other criteria, such as the number of occurrences of a unit in a piece of base content. A relatively high relevance score may be associated with a unit if the unit appears in a piece of base content a given number of times or more. In addition, a given unit may have a higher relevance score than other units if the given unit is in the base content more times than other units are in the base content.

In addition, the relevance score may be based on the location of a unit in a piece of base content, as specified by rules provided with the configuration file 240 or indicators included in the base content. For example, a unit may have a high relevance score if it is in the title, metadata keywords, metadata description, anchor text, body text, and is specified by formatting text that is, for example, bold, italic, and/or characterized as important text according to rules provided with the configuration file 240 or according to indicators included in the base content. A unit that is a proper noun may be considered important text and may be assigned a relatively high relevance score. The units considered to be significant units may vary depending on the particular entity server that provides the base content and configuration files to the parsing module. For example, a unit that includes a sports team name may be considered an important unit for a sports entity, but may not be considered an important unit for a movie entity.

According to one embodiment, units associated with a search term (e.g., a query) and search results 270 are transmitted to parsing server 210 and assigned relevance scores by unit ranking module 272. As described above, these elements may include elements that a user enters in a search engine to locate information. The units may be ranked by a unit ranking module according to at least one of a relevance score, revenue generation amount, and/or overall relevance score (described in detail later). The relevance score for a unit associated with a search may be based on the number of times the search was performed using the unit, or may be based on web page content (e.g., the number of times the unit is in the content) from a web page that the user selects for use (e.g., viewing, listening, etc.). For example, if the unit is used a relatively large number of times in one or more searches, the unit may be assigned a relatively high relevance score.

According to another embodiment, units from associated content 280 (e.g., product-related content) are transmitted to parsing server 210. Units from the associated content 280 may be transmitted to the parsing server and assigned relevance scores by the unit ranking module 272. The units may also be ranked by the unit ranking module described above. The relevance scores for these units may be based on whether the provider of the content management system 200 benefits from sales associated with the associated content (e.g., sales of music associated with other music purchased by the user). For example, the units may be assigned a relatively high relevance score if relatively large profits can be generated, or a relatively low relevance score if relatively little or no profits will be derived from the associated content. Alternatively, the relevance scores for these units may be based on whether the provider of the content management system 200 benefits from a user clicking on a link that launches a sales site or displays a sales site associated with the associated content. These relevance scores may be based on similar criteria for the sponsor links and whether the sponsor links are displayed, selected, and provided or whether sales are made from links to the sponsor sites. Alternatively, the relevance scores may be based on a number of other users who purchased products associated with the associated content. The foregoing relevance score determining techniques are described for exemplary purposes, and other useful techniques will occur to those of skill in the art to generate relevance scores for these units.

According to one embodiment, the relevance score varies as a function of time. For example, the relevance score may decrease over time. In particular, the relevance score of a unit may decrease based on the amount of time that has elapsed since the unit was transmitted to the resolution server. The relevance score may decrease stepwise or continuously and may be set to zero after a given amount of time. The amount by which the relevance score decreases over time may be different for different units. For example, the relevance score for a unit associated with a car may decrease linearly to zero over a period of approximately one month from the time the unit is received by the resolution server, while a unit associated with a vacation may decrease at a lower rate over a longer period of time (e.g., 2 to 6 months). For example, it is known from market research that users searching for cars typically purchase cars within about one month of their initial search. And it can be appreciated that users typically spend more months purchasing vacation travel packages (e.g., 2 to 6 months).

FIG. 3 is an exemplary user profile that may be generated by unit ranking module 272 (or other module) and may be stored in user behavior database 285 according to one embodiment of the invention. The user profile includes units associated with the user and includes a relevance score for each unit and includes a revenue generation amount for each unit. The revenue generation amount may be a dollar value or index value, and the relevance score may have a range from 0 to 1 (including 0 and 1) (or other useful range). In the particular example of FIG. 3, the units "light-duty truck" have a relatively high revenue generation amount (or dollar value) and a relatively high relevance score, while the units "pick-up truck", "truck", and "car" have a relatively low revenue generation amount and a relatively low relevance score.

Fig. 4A is an exemplary user profile that may be generated by unit-ranking module 272 (or other module) and may be stored in user-behavior database 285 according to another embodiment of the present invention. The user profile includes units associated with the user, a relevance score for each unit, a revenue generation amount for each unit, and an overall relevance score for each unit. The overall relevance score is a measure of the relevance of a unit to a user, and may be based on a number of factors, such as revenue generation, relevance scores, or other measures. For example, the overall relevance score may be based on a weighted linear combination of the revenue generation amount and the relevance score. The formula for calculating the overall relevance score of a unit is as follows:

ORS＝W*RGA+(1-W)*RS

where ORS is the overall relevance score, W is the weighting factor, RGA is the revenue generation amount and RS is the relevance score. The weighting factors may be provided by a web server that provides the base content. For example, the weighting factors may be provided to the content management system in the configuration file 240. Each web server may provide a different weighting factor. For example, a news entity may provide a weighting factor that places relatively greater emphasis on the relevance score than on the revenue generation amount. Such emphasis is given to a relevance score because users of news entities may be more interested in obtaining relevant news articles than in viewing advertisements and making purchases based on the content of the news articles. Alternatively, a music entity or movie entity may provide a weighting factor that places relatively greater emphasis on revenue generation amounts than on relevance scores. For example, users of music entities and movie entities are more likely to purchase music or movies that are related to articles about the music or movies. According to one embodiment, the unit ranking module 272 is configured to generate an overall relevance score for each unit in the user profile, e.g., based on the ORS formula described above.

Fig. 4B is an example of a user profile that may be generated by unit-ranking module 272 (or other module) and may be stored in user-behavior database 285 according to another embodiment of the invention. The user profile includes units associated with the user, a Price Per Click (PPC) for each unit and the piece of additional content associated with the unit, a Click Through Rate (CTR) for each unit and the piece of additional content associated with the unit, and a relevance score for each unit. In particular, the PPC includes a revenue generation amount for each piece of additional content that the user selects (or clicks on) to view, where each piece of additional content is associated with one element in the user profile. In addition, the click-through rate includes a predicted rate at which a user views a piece of additional content (advertisement, link, etc.), selects (or clicks on) the piece of additional content to view pages or sites associated with the piece of additional content (e.g., pages or sites pointed to by links (e.g., hyperlinks) included in the piece of additional content). The user profile may also include the Revenue Generation Amount (RGA) for each unit and its associated piece of additional content. RGA may be a function of CTR and PPC. For example, the RGA may be CRT times PPC (i.e., RGA CRT PPC). The foregoing method for calculating RGAs provides that although a unit and its associated piece of additional content has a relatively high PPC, if this piece of additional content does not have a high click-through rate, RGAs may be relatively low, thereby providing a relatively low ORS ═ W RGA + (1-W) × RS. Alternatively, if a unit and its associated piece of additional content have a relatively low PPC, but a relatively high CTR, the RGA may be relatively high, providing a relatively high ORS (W RGA + (1-W) RS. Accordingly, revenue generation amounts may be relatively optimized while providing relevant additional content to the user. The CTR and RGA amounts may be based on a statistically large number of page visits (e.g., 1000 page visits) to a page or site associated with a piece of additional content. The user profile shown in fig. 4B may also include an overall relevance score.

According to one embodiment, the user profile may be indexed in the user behavior database 285 according to the user identification number 290. Each user may be assigned a unique user identification number, which may be randomly generated. User identification number 290 may be stored in bcookie 295 on client browser 20. According to one embodiment, bcookie is transferred (e.g., in a URL) from the client browser 20 to one or more web servers 205 and further to the resolution server each time a user requests a piece of base content (e.g., a web page) via the client browser. The user identification number provided with the bcookie may be appended to the user profile (see fig. 3 and 4) by the parsing module 210 or other module for use in indexing the user profile when stored in the user behavior database. If a bcookie is not transferred from the client browser to the web server when the base content is requested, one or more of the web servers may generate a user identification number for the client browser and place the user identification number in the bcookie on the user's client browser when the base content is requested.

According to one embodiment, additional content 230 associated with the user is provided by one or more additional content servers 215. For example, the additional content may be provided by advertisement server 300, sponsor link server 305, integrated link server 310, internal link server 315, or other servers. The additional content provided by the ad server may be in the form of an advertisement (e.g., a banner advertisement) or a link to an advertisement. The additional content provided by the sponsor link server, the integrated link server and the internal link server may have the form of a link to the additional content. The links may include URLs, where the URL's target points to additional content to be provided by these servers.

More specifically, a sponsor link server may provide sponsor links to sponsor sites and sponsor pages. The link may include a URL with a target that includes the sponsor's web page. Sponsors (and advertisers) typically purchase units that: when purchased units are in the user profile, the units trigger a content management system (e.g., a web server) to request that a sponsor link be published with web content (e.g., base content, email, etc.). The integrated link server may provide integrated links to related content located on external servers or on servers associated with the provider of the content management system. The integrated link may not be associated with revenue generation. For example, to place an integrated link on a page, the unit that triggers the placement of the integrated link on the page may not be sold or licensed. The external server may not be subordinate to the provider of the content management server 200. For example, the provider of content management system 200 may be Yahoo! And the external server may be to Yahoo! A server providing a stand-alone news agent of news content or the like. External servers may be crawled (crawl) to build an index or database of relevant content and their units. The internal link server may include an internal link to a web server 205 (e.g., a Yahoo | entity server) associated with a provider (e.g., Yahoo | of the content management system 200). The Web server may include, for example, Yahoo! Launch, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! Health, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Weather or other entity servers.

According to one embodiment, each piece of additional content 230 (from which relevant content is identified) is associated with at least one unit. For example, each advertisement provided by the advertisement server, each piece of content associated with a sponsor link, the integrated link, and the internal link are associated with at least one unit. The additional content may be provided to the parsing sensor 210 with one or more units, or the units may be extracted from the additional content or information associated with the additional content. For example, advertisers may provide units with their advertisements to ensure that purchased units that may appear in the user profile match the units provided with the advertiser's advertisements. Additional content not provided with the units may be crawled to extract the units. In addition, the linked landing page can be crawled for units. Also, the landing page for the advertisement may be crawled for units. Home pages associated with advertisements can also be crawled for units. In addition, URLs for advertisements and links may be parsed and units extracted from the parsed URLs. The units may be indexed and cached in memory associated with the respective additional content servers or other storage. According to one embodiment, the parsing server 210 or another parsing server that may be associated with the additional content server may be configured to extract units from the additional content. The additional content server may schedule and parse the specification between servers to have their additional content crawled for units. The schedule may be periodic or may be established when the additional content server generates new content.

Providing related content, as well as web content, such as public content (e.g., base content) and/or private content (e.g., email, chat room discussions, etc.) is now described in detail. FIG. 5 is an exemplary web page that may be published on the display of client system 20 and includes base content 235 and related content 230 according to one embodiment of the invention. The primary content may include news articles, such as news articles about music combinations. The primary content may be provided by a physical server, such as Yahoo! News or Yahoo! Music. The related content may include one or more advertisements, sponsor links, internal links, integrated links, and the like. It should be understood that the web page shown in FIG. 5 is shown for exemplary purposes only, and that the web page may include other related content that is presented on the web page in various formats (e.g., video, audio, pictures, text, etc.).

According to one embodiment, the related content is associated with the user, or more specifically, a user profile at or before the time the user requests a piece of base content. The association between the relevant content and the user profile may be generated by the unit matching module 320. The association links the user profile to a piece of relevant content. The association may be a data base link that is a URL pointing to the user profile and related content. If a cell in the user profile matches a cell associated with a piece of related content, an association between the user profile and the piece of related content may be formed. For example, the element "light-duty truck" may be in a user profile and may be associated with an advertisement and one or more links. Because the unit "light-duty truck" is common to the user profile and the related content, an association is established between the user profile and the related content. According to another embodiment, an association is formed between the user profile and the related content if the units of the user profile and the related content are in the same set of related units. For example, a set of related units may include the units "light-duty truck", "pick-up truck", and "truck". An association may be formed between a user profile including the unit "light-duty truck" and an advertisement including the unit "pick-up truck" because these units are in the same set of related units. The associations may be used in real-time to provide web content and related content. Alternatively, the association between the user profile and the related content may be cached in a user behavior database or other memory for providing the user with a quick retrieval of the related content. The cached association may be stamped with a creation date and/or an expiration date. One or both of the dates may be used as indicators to indicate when the association should no longer be used.

According to one embodiment, one or more units in a user profile are compared to units associated with related content to determine if the units match. For example, the unit with the highest overall relevance score may be compared to units associated with related content. Alternatively, a number of units in the user profile having an overall relevance score greater than or equal to a threshold score may be compared to units associated with related content to determine if there is a match between the units. Providing a comparison of units with relatively higher relevance scores may enable a user to receive advertisements with relatively higher user relevance and possibly generate sales for advertisers and/or sponsors. Providing such a comparison may also result in optimizing profits for the service provider because advertisements having relatively high user relevance and relatively high revenue generation amounts are provided to the user. For example, revenue generation amounts may be greatly optimized because advertisements with the highest revenue generation amount or a relatively high generation amount but with relatively low user relevance are not provided to the user. That is, there is a high revenue generation amount regardless of the revenue generation amount associated with the advertisement, but advertisements that are not relevant to the user may not be selected to the user and no revenue may be generated for the provider of the system 200 (FIG. 2).

According to one embodiment, click-through rates are accumulated for related content provided with base content, and web page presentation of the base content and the related content is changed based on the click-through rates. The click through rate is the number of times a user selects to use a piece of related content in consideration of the number of times the piece of related content is provided to the user. If a given piece of relevant content has a higher click-through rate than another piece of relevant content, the given piece of relevant content may be published in a more prominent location on a subsequently published web page. For example, the given piece of relevant content may be placed higher in the list than other relevant content. Alternatively, the given piece of relevant content may replace other relevant content when the web page is published.

FIG. 6 is a high-level flow chart of steps for forming a user profile based on web pages viewed by a user according to an embodiment of the present invention. The high-level flow chart illustrates only the embodiment incorporating the present invention and is not intended to limit the scope of the invention as set forth in the claims. Alterations, modifications, and substitutions will occur to those skilled in the art including the spirit and scope of the illustrated embodiments. At 600, a user, for example using a client browser, requests a piece of base content from a web server. According to the request, the user identification number is obtained from a bcookie stored on the user's browser and transmitted to the web server in, for example, a URL or the like. If the bcookie is not transferred to the web servers, one or more of the web servers places the bcookie on the client browser such that the bcookie includes a unique user identification number assigned to the client browser. At 605, the base content requested by the user is parsed to generate parsed base content and units are extracted from the parsed base content. Units may be extracted based on a set of unit extraction rules and/or a unit dictionary module that may include units that may be extracted from parsed text.

At 610, units extracted from the parsed base content are ranked, for example, according to relevance scores (e.g., a measure of relevance of the units to the user) and/or revenue generation amounts. The relevance score may be compared to the revenue generation amount according to one or more formulas to provide additional content to the user that is relevant to the user such that revenue may be generated regardless of whether the additional content is associated with a highest possible revenue generation amount or a relatively higher revenue generation amount. The idea is that additional content that is not selected by the user due to lack of relevance may generate little or no revenue, whether the additional content is associated with the highest or relatively higher revenue generation amount. In addition, providing additional content that is highly relevant to the user but has little or no revenue generation value may also generate little or no revenue. A method of substantially optimizing revenue includes generating a product of a revenue generation amount and a relevance score and providing additional content if the product is within a predetermined window. Other formulas that may be used to substantially optimize revenue generation include weighted sum formulas and the like (as described above). Those skilled in the art will recognize a variety of methods for optimizing revenue generation and are contemplated within the scope and spirit of the present invention.

According to some embodiments, units are ranked according to an overall relevance score, which may be a function of relevance score and revenue generation amount. At 615, the units and their associated relevance scores and revenue generation amounts are stored in a user profile in a user behavior database. According to one embodiment, the overall relevance score is also stored in the user profile. The user profile may be indexed in the user behavior database based on a user identification number provided to the web server from the user's bcookie. According to one embodiment, units may be collected from user searches, for example, using a search engine, in addition to (or instead of) extracting units from base content, and units may be collected from related content associated with primary content requested by a user.

FIG. 7 is a high-level flow chart of steps for providing web content and related content relevant to a user based on a web page viewed by the user in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention. The high-level flow chart only shows the embodiment incorporating the present invention, and does not limit the scope of the invention as recited by the claims. Alterations, modifications, and substitutions will occur to those skilled in the art including the spirit and scope of the illustrated embodiments.

At 700, a user, for example using a client browser, requests a piece of content from one or more web servers. The requested content may include public content or private content. Public content may include, for example, web content, such as web pages and the like, that is accessible to the public without password protection, payment of fees, and the like. Private content may include web content (e.g., web pages, etc.) with personal properties that may be VOIP (voice over internet protocol), email transmission, storage and/or reception or used by other networks (e.g., the internet) with private properties and may be protected by password, encryption, paid access, or may be in a "chat room," discussion group. At 705, one or more web servers issue a request (e.g., in a URL or other format) to one or more additional content servers (e.g., an advertisement server, a sponsor server, an integration server, an inside server, etc.) to provide additional content (e.g., advertisements, sponsor links, integration links, inside links, etc.) to the web servers so that the additional content can be relevant to the user requesting the content.

At 710, one or more of the additional content servers issues a request to the element matching module to identify additional content relevant to the user. At 715, the unit matching module is configured to compare the units in the user profile to units associated with the additional content and determine if any of the units match. According to one embodiment, the unit matching module is configured to compare the units from the user profiles having the highest overall relevance scores, or to compare one or more units from the user profiles having overall relevance scores greater than or equal to a threshold score. The additional content may include advertisements provided by an advertisement database server, sponsor content provided by a sponsor server, integrated content provided by an integrated server, and/or inside content provided by an inside server. The sponsor content provided by the sponsor server, the integrated content provided by the integrated server, and/or the inside content provided by the inside server may be pointed to by a link (e.g., a URL, whose target is the content). If the units in the user profile match or are substantially similar to the units in the additional content (e.g., assigned to a common set), the additional content is considered relevant content that is relevant to the user. One or more associations (e.g., database links, URLs, etc.) may be formed between the user profile and the related content. The formed associations may be used to provide relevant content to a user (e.g., a human user using the client browser 20).

At 720, the related content is provided to the user along with other content that may include public content and/or private content. The additional content server may provide the additional content to one or more web servers configured to provide relevant content to the user's client browser. The relevant content may be provided to the web server and client browser according to protocols available to the content management system, such as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) or other protocols now in use. At any given moment, the web server, the resolution server, and the additional content server may appear as HTTP clients or HTTP servers, and may send Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to request and receive content in HTTP or other protocols.

The steps previously described in fig. 6 and 7 may be performed in real time as the user requests the primary content. That is, the content management system 200 may generate an association between the user profile and the related content in real-time as the user requests the base content, and the related content and the base content may be provided to the user's client browser. Alternatively, the steps may be performed asynchronously. That is, the content management system 200 may generate associations between user content and related content and cache the associations prior to receiving a user request for base content. The cached associations may then be used to provide relevant content to the user when the user requests web content (e.g., base content, email content, etc.). The cached associations may be saved in the user profile in a user behavior database or other database.

According to one embodiment, each unit in the user profile of the user is associated with a unit classification system 825 (FIG. 8) that includes category information for the units. The category information (e.g., class name) identifies the category in the unit classification system to which the unit is assigned. The categories in the unit classification system may be organized into a "tree" structure (fig. 9), where the higher-level categories 833 may comprise a collection of one or more lower-level categories 835. Units may be assigned to multiple categories in a unit classification system. For example, a unit assigned to a lower level category 837 may be said to be assigned to any higher level category 833 that includes the lower level category. The unit classification system may be a predetermined system, which may be computer-generated, human-generated, or a combination thereof. The units may be pre-assigned to the categories in a logical manner by the above-mentioned computer, person, or a combination thereof.

The parsing server 210 (e.g., the unit extraction module 250 included in the parsing server) or the like is configured to compare units in the user profile with units assigned to categories in the unit classification system. If the units in the user profile match or are substantially similar (e.g., synonyms, derivatives, etc.) to the units in a given category, category information for the given category is associated with the user via the user profile. For example, the category information (e.g., class name) may be stored in a user profile. In particular, the resolution server is configured to determine a "lowest" level category that includes units in the user profile. The lowest level category is the lowest category on the branch of the tree structure of the unit classification system that includes the particular unit. Any other category that may be included in the lowest level category does not include the particular unit. For example, the cell "light-duty truck" is assigned to category 837 (i.e., the lowest level category), and thus is also assigned to category 833, but is not assigned to categories 839a-839d included in category 837.

According to one embodiment, units extracted from the additional content 230 or otherwise associated with the additional content 230 are compared to units in a category in a unit classification system. A category is associated with a piece of additional content if the category includes units associated with the piece of additional content (e.g., an advertisement, a sponsor link, an integrated link, and/or an internal link).

According to one embodiment, category information used to identify categories may be placed in content metadata or otherwise associated with content. According to some embodiments, the additional content is pre-associated with one or more categories. The pre-association may be generated by a computer system or a human.

According to one embodiment, the unit matching module 320 or other module is configured to compare the category information stored in the user profile 225 with the category information for the plurality of pieces of additional content. If one or more categories in the user profile match the additional content, the additional content is deemed relevant to the user and may be provided with a piece of base content requested by the user. Thus, even if units and/or keywords in the user profile do not match units and/or keywords associated with additional content, but the units and/or keywords are associated with each other via the unit classification system (more specifically via category assignment), the additional content may still be identified as relevant to the user and may be provided to the user.

The categories assigned to a user profile may be assigned relevance scores and thus ranked as user relevance (as described above) similar to the units assigned to the user profile. For example, the relevance scores assigned to units may be assigned to categories that include units. Alternatively, if a category in the user profile includes multiple units, the relevance score for the category may be a function (e.g., an average) of the relevance scores of the units. If one or more categories in the user profile match one or more categories of additional content, the highest ranked (e.g., highest relevance score) category may be used to select additional content to provide to the user.

The revenue generation amount may be assigned to a category associated with the additional content. The unit matching module may identify a matching category for the user profile and the additional content whose category has the highest revenue amount. According to an alternative embodiment, the unit matching module may provide the additional content to the user using a formula that takes into account both the relevance scores for the categories in the user profile and the revenue generation amounts for the categories of the additional content, such that revenue generation is greatly optimized for categories having relatively high relevance to the user. That is, additional content having relatively low relevance to the user is not provided to the user simply because the additional content has a high revenue generation amount. Finally, if the user is not interested in the additional content, the user may not click on the additional content and will likely generate little or no revenue from the additional content, regardless of whether the additional content has a relatively high revenue generation amount.

It is understood that the examples and embodiments described above are for illustrative purposes only and that various modifications or changes in light thereof will be suggested to persons skilled in the art and are to be included within the spirit and purview of this application and scope of the appended claims. For example, although embodiments of the content management system described herein are characterized as including a unit dictionary provided by a query processing engine, units may be provided from other sources. In addition, keywords and/or units may be used in embodiments of the invention, such as extracting keywords from the base content to generate a user profile and extracting keywords from the related content for comparison by a keyword matching module. For example, referring to FIG. 10, a content management system 200 "is shown, which, in contrast to the embodiment described above configured as a usage unit, the content management system 200" includes a keyword extraction module, a keyword matching module, a keyword dictionary module, and a keyword matching module.

Further, while the user is generally described herein as a human user interacting with a user interface of a computer that processes requests for base content, the user may also be a computer process or computer system that programmatically generates requests for base content. In the latter case, the user initiating the request may also programmatically process the results of the request for primary content, but may also issue a request for primary content by a computer process and/or computer system, with the human user being the ultimate recipient of the content. Accordingly, the above description should not be taken as limiting the scope of the invention, which is defined by the claims.

Claims

1. A system configured to provide primary content and related content to a user system based on an association of a user profile and the related content to relate the related content to a user, the system comprising:

a plurality of web servers configured to provide the base content and the related content to the user system;

a set of additional content servers configured to provide the relevant content to the web server if a cell in the user profile matches a cell associated with the relevant content;

a parsing server configured to extract units in the user profile from the base content requested by the user and generate a hierarchical list of units in the user profile; and

a unit matching module configured to determine if units in the user profile match units associated with the related content if the user requests the base content, wherein the web server is configured to provide the base content and the related content if units in the user profile match units associated with the related content.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the resolution server comprises:

a parsing module configured to parse the base content to generate parsed base content;

a unit extraction module configured to extract units in the user profile from the parsed base content; and

a unit ranking module configured to generate a ranked list of units in the user profile.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the web server is configured to transmit units of associated content associated with primary content to the parsing module.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the primary content comprises the base content and the web server is configured to provide the related content with private content.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the private content comprises at least one of an email and a chat room discussion.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein:

the ranked list includes a relevance score for each unit in the user profile and a revenue generation amount for each unit in the user profile, an

Units in the user profile are ranked based on at least one of the relevance score and the revenue generation amount.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the resolution server is configured to calculate an overall relevance score for units in the user profile based on the relevance scores and the revenue generation amounts.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the parsing server is configured to compare units in the user profile having an overall relevance score greater than or equal to a threshold score with units associated with the relevant content.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein the overall relevance score is generated according to the following formula:

ORS＝W*RGA+(1-W)*RS

where ORS is the overall relevance score, W is the weighting factor, RGA is the revenue generation amount, and RS is the relevance score.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the RGA is based on a click-through rate and a price per click for the related content.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the RGA is CTR PPC, wherein the CTR and the PPC represent a click through rate and a price per click, respectively, of the related content.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the unit matching module is configured to generate an association between the user profile and the related content if a unit in the user profile matches a unit associated with the related content.

13. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a database configured to store the user profile, wherein the user profile is indexed in the database by a user identification number; and

a bcookie configured to be stored on the user system and configured to store the user identification number.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the web server is configured to provide the base content and the related content if a cell in the user profile matches a cell associated with the related content or if a cell in the user profile and a cell associated with the related content are in the same set of cells.

15. The system of claim 1, further comprising a unit dictionary module configured to include a list of all units that can be extracted from the base content.

16. A system configured to associate a user profile with related content, the system comprising:

a parsing module configured to parse the base content requested by the user and generate parsed base content;

a unit dictionary module comprising a plurality of units;

a unit extracting module configured to extract a unit included in the unit dictionary from the parsed basic content, the unit extracted from the parsed basic content being referred to as an extracting unit;

a unit ranking module configured to rank the extraction units based on at least one of relevance scores and revenue generation amounts respectively associated with the extraction units, and generate a ranked list of extraction units;

a user profile associated with a user and including the ranked list; and

a unit matching module configured to generate an association between the user profile and the related content if an extraction unit in the ranked list matches a unit associated with the related content.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the unit matching module is configured to generate an association between the base content and the related content if a highest ranked extraction unit matches or is in the same set of related units as at least one of the units associated with the related content.

18. The system of claim 16, further comprising a plurality of web servers configured to provide the base content and the related content to a client browser based on the association.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the base content and the related content are configured to be provided on a web page of a client browser.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the related content comprises an advertisement and/or is pointed to by a set of links, the set of links is configured to be provided with the base content, and the set of links comprises at least one of a sponsor link, an integrated link, and an internal link.

21. The system of claim 16, further comprising at least one web server configured to provide a configuration file to the parsing module, wherein the configuration file includes a set of parsing rules for parsing the base content.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the profile includes weighting factors for the relevance scores and the revenue generation amounts.

23. The system of claim 21, wherein the parsing rule is for parsing at least one of a title, a metadata keyword, a metadata description, an anchor text, a body text, a proper noun, a formatted text.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the formatted text comprises at least one of bold text and italicized text.

25. The system of claim 23, wherein the parsing rule is further for parsing text characterized as important text by an indication in the base content.

26. The system of claim 16, wherein the unit ranking module is configured to calculate an overall relevance score for the extraction unit based on the revenue generation amount and the relevance score.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the unit matching module is configured to determine whether an extraction unit having an overall relevance score greater than or equal to a threshold score matches at least one of the units associated with the relevant content.

28. A system configured to provide base content and related content together to a user system to relate the related content to a user, the system comprising:

a plurality of web servers configured to provide base content and related content;

a parsing server configured to generate a user profile of the unit based on the basic content requested by the user;

a unit matching module configured to generate an association between the user profile and the related content if at least one unit in the user profile matches a unit associated with the related content; and

a user system configured to receive base content and related content provided by at least one web server and publish the base content and the related content on a web page based on the association.

29. The system of claim 28, wherein the related content is related to the user if a cell in the user profile matches a cell associated with the related content.

30. The system of claim 28, wherein if the user requests the base content, the related content and the base content are provided to the user system based on the association.

31. The system of claim 28, wherein the related content comprises an advertisement and/or is pointed to by a set of links, the set of links being provided with the base content, and the set of links comprising at least one of a sponsor link, an integrated link, and an internal link.

32. The system of claim 28, wherein the unit ranking module is configured to calculate an overall relevance score for units associated with the user profile based on revenue generation amounts and relevance scores for units associated with the user profile.

33. The system of claim 32, wherein the overall relevance score is generated according to the following formula:

ORS＝W*RGA+(1-W)*RS

34. The system of claim 33, wherein the RGA is based on a click-through rate and a price per click for the related content.

35. The system of claim 34, wherein the RGA is CTR PPC, wherein the CTR and the PPC represent a click-through rate and a price per click, respectively, of the related content.

36. A method for providing related content and web content related to a user, the method comprising:

requesting primary content from a computer network;

extracting a set of units from the base content, said units being referred to as extraction units;

assigning relevance scores and revenue generation amounts to the extraction units, respectively;

ranking the extraction units based on at least one of the relevance scores and the revenue generation amounts; and

forming a user profile including a ranked list of extraction units, the relevance scores and the revenue generation amounts.

37. The method of claim 36, further comprising parsing the base content to generate parsed base content, wherein the extracting a set of units from the base content comprises extracting the set of units from the parsed base content.

38. The method of claim 36, further comprising storing the user profile in a user behavior database.

39. The method of claim 38, further comprising

If the user requests web content, obtaining the user profile from the user behavior database; and then

Providing the web content with the relevant content if at least one of the extracted units matches at least one of the units associated with the relevant content.

40. The method of claim 36, further comprising:

forming at least one association between the user profile and the related content if at least one of the extracted units matches at least one of the units associated with the related unit;

caching the association in a memory;

retrieving the association from the memory if the user requests web content; and then

Providing the base content and the related content together.

41. The method of claim 36, wherein the web content comprises private content and public content.

42. The method of claim 41 wherein the private content comprises at least one of an email and a chat room discussion.

43. The method of claim 41, wherein the public content comprises web content.

44. The method of claim 36, further comprising extracting the extraction units from the base content based on a set of units in a unit dictionary module.

45. The method of claim 36, wherein the related content comprises an advertisement.

46. The method of claim 36, wherein the related content is pointed to by a set of links provided with the base content.

47. The method of claim 46, wherein the set of links includes at least one of a sponsor link, an integrated link, and an internal link.

48. The method of claim 36, wherein the ranking step comprises calculating an overall relevance score for units in the user profile based on the revenue generation amount and the relevance score.

49. The method of claim 48, wherein the ranking step comprises determining whether the unit in the user profile having the highest overall relevance score matches at least one of the units associated with the relevant content.

50. A method for providing related content and web content related to a user, the method comprising:

requesting web content from a computer network; and

providing the web content with the related content if at least one element in the user profile matches at least one element associated with the related content.

51. A system configured to provide base content and related content to a user system based on an association between a user profile and the related content to relate the related content to a user, the system comprising:

a set of additional content servers configured to provide the relevant content to the web server if the category of the unit in the user profile matches the category of the unit of the relevant content; and

a unit matching module configured to determine whether a category in the user profile matches a category of the additional content, wherein the web server is configured to provide the relevant content with the base content if one or more of the categories match.