GB2472562A

GB2472562A - Assessing the value of an item

Info

Publication number: GB2472562A
Application number: GB0907188A
Authority: GB
Inventors: William George Imlah
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2009-02-16
Filing date: 2009-04-27
Publication date: 2011-02-16
Also published as: GB0907188D0; GB0909974D0; GB0902417D0

Abstract

Method to generate information indicative of the value of an item comprising: accessing information about the item,comparing the information about the item against information about a plurality of objects for which information exists relevant to the value, condition and context of the objects;identifying a subset of the objects representative of the value of the item; and processing the information associated with the set of objects to produce information that can be used to assess the monetary or other representative value of the item consistent with the condition, context or other circumstances of the said item.

Description

DESCRIPTION

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention described below relates to data processing apparatus and methods for evaluating the value of an item about which information is available via the computerized comparison of said information with information about the condition, context or other circumstances of specific goods, services or specific objects of other types where those objects are similar in given ways to the item under consideration.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

When insurance companies recompense individuals for insured loss or damage, an important financial concern is to make sure that the amount recompensed is not higher than the cost of a similar or equivalent rep'acement item, service, or other replaceab'e object of insurance, on the open market at time of settlement.

This can be problematic where the items is to be replaced on an old-for-o'd basis, for example where amount recompensed is dependent on the potential purchase price of a range of vehicles each of which has a selling price that is influenced by circumstances for that unique vehicle based on attributes not determinable from a product description, such as but not limited to date of manufacture, mileage, existing damage scratches or dents, and the physical location of the vehicle.

Traditionally, this has involved insurance company representatives undertaking research such as, in the case of lost or damaged vehicles, looking up price reference books or databases compiled from market statistics on the sales of second hand vehides that are similar enough in make, mode', age, condition and mileage to be considered roughly equivalent in value to the damaged or lost vehicle. By checking the aggregated figures, the insurer can make a rough estimate of what a similar vehicle would cost the claimant should they choose to replace the lost or damaged vehicle with a similar or equivalent vehicle.

However, this s problematic for insurers as the figures give no indication of information about actual vehides for sale that cou'd be used by the nsurer to check that the given figures are up to date and vad for the particular context of the item being claimed for. In particular the insurer is not able, in making a offer of settlement to the claimant, to provide information to back up the "book price" in the form of actua' advertisements of particular vehicles that are suitab'e to act as replacements, making it more likely that the claimant may challenge the offer, creating expense in time and effort for the insurer and risking conflict or loss of goodwill from the claimant.

In this examp'e vehicle insurance has been used, but the principle applies to anything which has been insured and which the insured person wishes to make a claim on. Similarly, the insured person can a'so check such details to make similar assessments, for example to make a rough estimate of whether the settlement they are being offered by an insurance company is likely to be sufficient to cover the cost of replacing the item.

In addition, in some circumstances the trend in prices over time can mean that by the time such reference books or databases are compiled and published, the prices quoted in such reference books or databases can be out of date.

Moreover, there are often geographical variations or other context-dependent variations in the market related to the circumstances of the specific item being evaluated, which cannot be recovered from the aggregated information published in such information sources. This can have adverse financial consequences for insurance companies, where they may make settlements based on out-of-date or over-generalised figures that are either higher than the market value of the vehicle concerned at that particular time and in the particular area or areas accessible to the insured person, thus incurring unnecessary extra costs for the company concerned, or lower than the market value for that vehicle at that time and for the particular geographical ocation of the insured person, thus leading to perceptions on the part of the company's clients that they are being treated unfairly, eading to loss of business and reputation, and causing delays and extra work in the process of negotiating a settlement. All these factors can incur financial costs to the company, and extra work for the insurer, as well as unnecessary expense and frustration for the insured person if they are attempting to evaluate the settlement using out-of-date or otherwise inappropriate information.

To help alleviate this problem, insured persons or insurance company representatives can research the market by manually checking websites advertising the sale or resale of specific second-hand vehicles. However, this is a time-consuming process. On the one hand it typically involves accessing a number of distinct websites, each with different formats and web page features for making searches for vehicles using differing ways of entering and specifying search criteria such as price, make and model. Moreover, some criteria which are important for making comparisons relevant to the task of determining the market value of vehicles comparable to those under consideration for recompense for loss or damage may not be available to search on, on some or all of these sites. This means that the insured person or representative of the insurance company may need to review the search results returned from a search made on one of these websites, by clicking on each link in the search results and reading the thus-retrieved web page to determine whether the vehicle described on the said page is in a comparable condition, is in an appropriate context of availability, or is a comparable model to the vehicle concerned. For example, the search facilities on a particular website may not allow the searcher to select or rank results based on features such as mileage, particular subtype of vehicle model (such as "LX", "GTI" or "Ghia"), location of the vehicle concerned, or whether or not the vehicle has metallic paint. The extra effort required to undertake these checks and researches can drastically reduce or even negate the potential value to the company in making these extra checks. Moreover, this type of approach can overload the assessor with information, making it difficult to make reliable or sound judgements in some circumstances.

Where the item to be replaced is new, or is being replaced on a new-for-old basis, it is possible to check standard price listings that apply model-wide for a particular make and model that can be supplied by the manufacturer or the manufacturers dealers, usually to exactly the same specification.

For example, in the case of insured items of jewellery, insurance companies process claims for loss or damage by researching to cost of similar new items, there being no concept in that field comparable to "mileage" and where depreciation through age is not a concept in the way that it is in, say, the vehicle insurance industry. In the case of the jewellery insurance industry, the insured person typically provides information such as a receipt that shows a purchase amount and a description of the item in question. In such cases the need of the insurance company is to determine whether the replacement of a item is possible for a cheaper cost, and in this case industry practice is to review the cost of items from merchants offering the replacement item for sale, rather than private individuals, and so it is not the practice to scan advertisements for second hand replacements. In that case, where databases are collected with information about availability and cost of replacements, the databases store generic information about product specifications and product accessory information (rather than information about an individual object with attributes specific to that specific object and to its history) with the intention of identifying generally a product from which the insured person or their representative can select a particular instance of that product at a particular retail outlet at their convenience. The term "specification" as used herein refers to attributes of the item which are generic to it as a product (such as, in the field of vehicles: make; model; body type; subtype; number of doors; fuel type; transmission; and engine size) the values of which are unaffected by normal usage of an object that matches such a specification.

Where the insurance company communicates to the insured person a replacement possibility, they do so by referring to product description, or services to assemble sets of components in terms of component descriptions, rather than a specific physical object located at a specific physical location and with a specific history.

Likewise, there is no comparable concept in the jewellery industry for the tables used in the vehicle insurance industry indicating aggregate values for the replacement of vehicles based on age, mileage and depreciated condition. n addition, where items are being replaced reliant on a cost derived from product-description (as in the case of a new vehicle or an item of jewellery) available replacements tend to be available in outlets in a wide range of geographical locations, and so are usually collectable by the insured person at low cost.

Similarly, for small items like jewellery, they may also be deliverable at low cost.

However, this approach is not possible for used vehicles, for which the attributes related to their market value may involve a complex set of characteristics such as number of previous owners, mileage, age, condition, accident history, service history, condition of bodywork, available or remaining MOT, known damage, and internal wear and tear. tn these circumstances, reviewing used-vehicle websites to make a determination of the likely value of a particular used vehicle can be both time consuming and problematic.

Similarly, in other fields where a particular second-hand item is available for sale or purchase, or is subject to evaluation of the cost of replacing the item where it has become unavailable, the same problem arises as to how to efficiently, easily and reliably estimate the cost of replacing that ftem, given that a considerable number of nteracting factors affect the market value of a particular second-hand item that do not need to be considered when pricing the cost of a new replacement. Likewise, where items do not conform to a manufacturers specification, but vary between individual objects or providers (such as custom-built items or services provided by individual service providers each of whom provides a distinct and different service each time it is performed), it is not possible to use an approach based on "manufacturer's specification".

Thus where the particular condition or circumstances of the item are specific or even unique to the context of that particular purchase or sale (e.g. the condition, age, particular location, conditions of sa'e or purchase or availability), it is often a very time-consuming or expensive process for the potential buyer, seller or other interested party to search for and identify similar or equiva'ent items that could be used to be able to make an assessment of the market value appropriate to the condition, circumstances or context of the particular item under consideration for purchase, sate, replacement or recompense.

SUMMARY OF THE tNVENTION

A purpose of the invention is to provide a solution to the above prob'ems by providing a method of assessing the value of an object, such as a vehicle in an insurance claim, by selecting a set of objects, such as other particular vehicles, that are simi'ar to the item in question and using that information to assess the value of the item in question using exemplars identified as likely to be close enough in characteristics, location or other features to serve as a replacement for the item in question and which take into account object specific features such as but not limited to mileage, date of purchase and physical location.

In accordance wfth the above, it is a first object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus which automates aspects of the process of assessing the value of a particu'ar item using information about other particular objects by: accessing information specific to the particular item (such as but not restricted to: condition, age, appearance, location or area of availability, restrictions on use or usability, context of purchase or sale, risk associated with the purchase, sale or use, or other features which may be specific to the said item); comparing the said information about the item against information about a plurality of objects for which information specific to each of the objects exists relevant to the value of each of the objects; identifying a set of said objects that would be, or which may have been, avaiabe to replace the item under consideration, or which are representative of the value of the said item had it been sold rather than lost or damaged; and processing the information associated with said set of objects using one or more comparison measures to produce information that can be used to assess the monetary or other value of the said item consistent with the condition, context or other circumstances of the said item.

A second object of the invention is to identify a subset of objects as the most appropriate potential equivalents or replacements for the item under consideration, according to some criteria, and to output that information or provide links to the source of such information, so that both the insurer and the claimant can be quickly and efficiently furnished with the information needed to help ensure the smooth handling of the claim, by engendering confidence in both parties of the appropriateness of any offer being made.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These and other aspects of this invention will be readily apparent from the description below and the appended drawings, which are meant to illustrate and not to limit the invention, and in which: FIG. 1 s a block diagram showing the components in one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 s a flowchart illustrating in the operation of the selection component 20.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating the operation of the weighting component 30.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

The principles of the present invention are appficable to a variety of computer hardware and software configurations. The term "computer hardware" or "hardware," as used in this document, refers to any machine or apparatus that is capable of accepting, performing logic operations on, storing, or displaying data, and includes without limitation processors and memory; the term "processor" as used herein may refer to a single processing unit or to a plurality of processing units which may or may not be distributed across a computer network; the term "computer software" or "software," refers to any set of instructions operable to cause computer hardware to perform an operation. A "computer," as that term is used herein, includes without limitation any useful combination of hardware and software, and a "computer program" or "program" includes without limitation any software operab'e to cause computer hardware to accept, perform logic operations on, store, or display data. A computer program may be comprised of a plurality of sma'ler programming units, for instance subroutines, modules, functions, methods, and procedures. Thus, the functions of the present invention may be distributed among a plurality of computers and computer programs. The invention is described best, though, as a single computer program that configures and enables one or more general-purpose computers to implement the novel aspects of the invention.

For the purposes of clarfty, the description of the embodiment uses examples from the area of insurance daim processing, in particular vehicle insurance daims, but it shou'd be understood that the invention covers the processing of descriptions of any goods, services or other items where there is a need to assess the market value, regardless of whether it is subject to an insurance claim or whether or not it may be the subject of an insurance proposal or policy. For example, the system may be used by a potential buyer or sel'er of a specific thing or service to quickly ascertain automatically or semi-automaticaUy what the current value is of objects identified as similar in condition, type, appearance, components, configuration, feel, other experiential or sense-based aspects, or location or availability to the specific item being considered for purchase, hire, commission, sale or rental.

In this document, the word object' is used throughout to describe any specific instance of goods, services, property or physical objects for which information is available about the object's condition, price, description or the context in which it exists or is available. Likewise the word item' is used throughout to describe the object under consideration for which the market value (or expected market value had the item not been lost, damaged or otherwise changed in circumstances, or in any other hypothetical situation which may be assumed) is to be assessed. In the case where the item has been lost or damaged, the assessment of the value of the item may be an assessment of the value of the item had it not been lost or damaged. Both the words item' and object' may be used to refer to anything for which it may be possib'e to assess a market value, or in the case of objects for which information about condition, context or other circumstances includes hypothetical information about the object (such as the hypothesised condition and circumstances of lost or damaged items had they not been lost or damaged) to use information about or assess the market value of said objects or items in relation to the hypothetical circumstances or condition, where the hypothesized condition s dependent on aspects of the object not discernable from a general prod uct description (such as meage or date of purchase), or other type of usage information not listed here. The terms "usage information", "usage-related information" and "information about usage" are used throughout this document to mean any information related to the usage or history of an object which may have an effect on its market value at time of sale, for example mileage or information related to wear and tear, information about pre-existing damage, and information indicative of the likelihood or otherwise of corrosion or indicative of the likelihood or otherwise of any other type of deterioration of material or components. n addition the words item' and object' may refer to a set of distinct objects that form a logical unit, in the same way that a "dinner set", or "football team" are each made up of a distinct items of crockery or a distinct set of individuals, but can be perceived and assessed as a unit with sub-parts in order to make assessments or evaluations of the overall value or worth of the unit by assessing either its attributes as a unit or the attributes of one or more of its sub-parts, or both.

tn this document the word "attribute" is used throughout to describe any characteristic of an object or item which may be relevant to the assessment of its value such as: physical characteristics and other inherent characteristics of the object or item; characteristics of the context or circumstances related to the object (for example, its physical location) including but not limited to characteristics related to the legal situation for that item or object (for example details about the owner or person insuring it such as their home address or postcode).

The preferred embodiment will be described in terms of a system for use in making assessments of the value of insured items for the purpose of settling insurance claims. In this embodiment, the items for which the value is being assessed will be motor vehicles which are the subject of insurance claims.

Referring now to the drawings, FIG. I shows a block diagram of the components of the system in the preferred embodiment: An input component 10 receives item information descriptive of the attributes of the item which is the subject of assessment. In the preferred embodiment such attributes may include features that might be expected by the insured person to be relevant in the consideration of the suitability or similarity of a relevant replacement vehicle such as make, model, body type, fuel type, transmission type and number of doors, and those features of the vehicle at the time of insurance or prior to its loss or damage which are likely to influence the market value of the vehicle such as, but not limited to, recorded mileage, year of manufacture, registration period (e.g., 03, T, V, 55), and known modifications or damage at the time of insurance or immediately prior to the loss or damage being claimed for. In addition, features relevant to the context of the item assessment such as the location or post code of the registered abode of the insured person may be included in the information provided to the item information component 10.

The item information is then passed to a selection component 20 which uses the information to identify matching records from a database of object records 35, hereafter referred to as the object record database, where the recorded information includes attributes of specific second-hand vehicles currently or recently for sale. The comparison component 20 selects a set of such database records by matching the values of attributes of those vehicles in the object record database with one or more of the attributes provided to the item information component 10.

For some attributes the match may be required to be exact, for example, where the item has value "Ford" for attribute "make" and value "Focus" for attribute "model", only object records with those same values of make and model attributes should be matched. "Ford" and "Ford Focus" are registered trademarks of Ford Motor Company. n the preferred embodiment, an exact match s required for make, model, body type, transmission type, number of doors, subtype, fuel type and either of calendar year or registration year, except that no distinction is made between upper and lower case letters.

For other attributes there may be considered to be a match if the value of the attribute on the database record is within a certain range of the value of the attribute of the vehicle being assessed. An example of such an attribute is mileage, for which records which fall within a certain range of values might be considered to be acceptable matches, for example, vehicles whose recorded mileage is not more than 20% lower and not more than 3% higher than the recorded mileage of the item being assessed. In this way a subset of vehicle records from the object record database can be identified that are likely to be acceptable to the insured party as a potential replacement or equivalent to the vehicle for which the claim is being processed. In the preferred embodiment, the following attributes are considered to match if they fall within a certain range: mileage (within five percent of the mileage recorded for the item being assessed), proximity (within fifteen miles of the location specified in relation to the vehicle under assessment), and engine size (within 100 cc of the specified value).

For the set of vehicles which are considered to be a match, an ordering is calculated using an ordering function. The ordering thus calculated may give two or more vehicles equal ranking, in which case an arbitrary order is used for those two or more vehicles in relation to each other. In the preferred embodiment the ordering function is a weighting function whereby the values used to indicate the order of objects are also indicative of weightings for the objects.

It should be clarified that in the preferred embodiment a lower weighting is indicative of the suitabity of the corresponding object for consideration, and a higher weighting is indicative of less suitability. For example, an increase in the "price" attribute of the object wifi ncrease the weighting and therefore decrease its suitability for the purpose of minimizing the cost of making a settlement with an insured client. An inverse relationship is not necessary for the practicing of the invention, but is important to remember for the correct understanding of the

description that follows.

n the preferred embodiment, the proximity of the location related to the item under assessment to the location for an object for which a weighting is being processed is calculated using the postcode information for the item and the object.

Methods of calculating distances between postcodes based on location are well known. In the preferred embodiment a database is used which specifies for each postcode co-ordinates given as an x and y offset in mi'es from an arbitrary, fixed location corresponding to a physical location representative of the postcode's coverage, and to calculate the length in miles of the distance between the two locations represented by the x and y co-ordinates of each location. It is recognized that calculating the distance between two locations based on postcode is likely to be approximate. In another embodiment, more exact co-ordinates representative of the geographical ocations are recorded directly in the item record and each of the object records. In another embodiment, the database of postcode locations records information for the first half of UK postcodes rather than for the full postcode.

In the preferred embodiment some attributes which are not used by the selection component 20 in the process of identifying matching records may be used by the weighting component 30 during the process of calculating the weighting for the item being assessed. For example in the preferred embodiment, the price attribute of an object is not used in the selection process but is an element in the calcu'ation of the object's weighting relative to the ftem under assessment. In one embodiment, the attribute "paint type" which can have values "standard" and "metallic" is not used to identify the subset of object records to process, but is used to multip'y the weighting of the object record by 0.9 in the case where both the object record and the item record have the value "metallic" for the attribute "paint type", by 1.2 where they differ, and by 0.95 where one or other of the values is not known.

The processing of weighting component 30 in the preferred embodiment wiU be described in more deta below, but may be configured to decrease the weighting where the comparison is considered favourable (for instance, decreasing the weighting by 25% where the recorded mileage of the object being assessed is not more than 05% higher than that of the vehicle being claimed-for, or where the recorded selling price for the object record is ower than the average vehicle selling price recorded in the set of selected object records) and to increase the weighting where the comparison is considered unfavourable (for instance, where the distance between the registered address of the owner of the insured vehicle, and the recorded location of the seller of the potential replacement vehicle represented by an object record is ten miles or more).

The weighting component 30 calculates, for each record in the set of selected object records, a weighting in the form of a numerical value to assess the suitability of the object as a repacement for the item being assessed. In one embodiment, the weighting component uses the information about a set of object records, or information about the absence of other object records, to calculate the weighting for a particular object record under consideration. For example, the weighting of the record may be decreased by 10% in the case that it is the only record in the object set for which the caculated location is within five miles of the calculated item location. In one embodiment, the weighting of an object record with a calculated proximity value of less than ten mes and a paint type value of "standard" is increased by 5% in the case where the item has paint type value "metallic" and the object record set contains more than ten objects with paint type value "metallic" with a calculated proximity of ten miles or less.

n another embodiment, the records in the set of object records are grouped into subsets based on attribute values or weightings (e.g. the subset of object records for which the paint-type is "metallic") and calculations made relative to these subsets in order to adjust the weightings for individual object records or other such subsets. For example, the ratio of the size of the subset of selected vehicles with paint type "metallic" to the overall set size may be used to calculate a factor by which to multiply the weighting of records which match the item in paint type as follows: if less that 2% of the objects match the item in paint type "metallic", multiply the weighting for the ones that match by 0.8.

In other embodiments, the weighting calculations may be made in more than one pass. For examp'e the first pass may calcu'ate a weighting based on the values in the given object record and the item record, and subsequent passes may adjusting the weightings of individua' objects or groups of objects based on information available after the completion of the previous pass, such as but not limited to attributes of individual records, the distribution of information va'ues in the set, or weightings of individual records and weightings of groups of records. In one embodiment, if the vehicles with the five lowest weightings include a vehicle with proximity value of more than 100 miles, then the weightings of vehicles which are less than 100 miles away are decreased by 20 percent.

In another embodiment, a set of weighting functions is employed, and the particu'ar function to use is dependent on the attribute values available for the item being assessed. For example, where information for the item record is representative of a high-performance vehide, such as a value of "Ferrar' for attribute "make", a weighting function may be employed which does not increase or decrease the weighting of an object based on proximity if the calculated proximity s less than three hundred miles or does not alter the weighting based on age of advertisement if the elapsed time since the object was first advertised in the given advertisement is within six months; and where information is representative of a model of vehicle known to be very common, such as Ford Focus, then a weighting function may be employed which increases the weighting of an object by 5% if its calculated proximity is greater than five miles, and by 8% if the advertisement of the vehide for sale was first published more than four weeks ago. Likewise, in other embodiments the functions used by selection component 20, results component 40 and presentation component 50 may be similarly made dependent on attribute values of the item supplied to input component 10. "Ferrari" is a registered trademark of Ferrari NA and Ferrari SpA.

In addition to the weighting information calculated by weighting component 30, in one embodiment the system may also calculate summary information such as statistical information about the set of vehicles selected as a potential replacement for the item or as meeting some criteria of similarity to the item, including but not limited to the highest and lowest prices recorded for vehicles for sale in the set of selected object records, the mean or median va'ues, the average values of matching vehicles at different time points, or the average values of matching vehides in the locality of the insured person, in various other regions, or nationwide. In another embodiment, the output component disp'ays information related to trends in the market or social trends, such as: the percentage of advertisements identified as dropping in price within two weeks of appearing; the average percentage change in price for those advertisements; and rates of change in the weekly statistics related to price change over a period of months.

In one embodiment the weighting function is a simple assignment, setting the weighting of the object to be the value of its price attribute. In two other embodiments the weighting function is similarly defined as an equivalence to a value calculated for proximity and a value calculated for elapsed time since the vehicle was first advertised for sale respectively.

The results component 40 selects particular information identified as most useful or relevant to the task in hand. For example, in the preferred embodiment, the results component is configured to select the five lowest-priced vehicles in the set of vehicles with the ten lowest weightings.

In the preferred embodiment information about the objects identified by results component 40 is displayed by presentation component 50 via a browser web page, in ascending price order, with the following attributes displayed for each vehicle: make, model, subtype, body type, fuel type, transmission, paint type, colour, mileage, price, registration year, calendar year of manufacture, postcode, calculated proximity, elapsed time in days since any vehicle advertisements were published, information about whether the vehicle advertisements are still available or has been withdrawn, and a clickable link or links configured to allow the operator of the browser to display pages on vehicle sales advertisement sites in the case where those advertisements are still available, or to display cached copies of the advertisements where not available. In the case where the advertisements are still available, links provided to the advertiser's website include affiliate-information identifying the URL as having been originated by the system.

In this way the operator of the invention may generate revenue in affiliate programs run by the operators of the websites advertising used vehicles where the revenue is derived when the users of the system, or claimants that the users forward the URLs to, follow the URLs to the given website, or make a purchase based on following such URLs. Website affiliate programs as described at http:llen.wikipedia.orglwiki/Aff iate_marketing are weU known.

In one embodiment, as part of the process of assessing the item, a data collection component checks, for each vehide in the set of vehicles to be displayed, whether the advertisement for that vehicle is accessib'e and up-to-date, by attempting to retrieve it and by modifying the weightings or removing the vehicle for the set, according to the current information available from the website hosting the advertisement, and the browser requests this information from the application via an AJAX mechanism so that it can be updated while the user is displaying, reviewing and refining the selection of vehicles. In another embodiment, on receiving information from the information component, the system initiates the data col'ection component to make retrieval requests specific to the item under consideration, eg. search requests for vehides similar to the item, identifies and retrieves advertisements for vehicles similar to the item, and updates the object record store to ensure that the subsequent processing uses information, and the results displays to the user information, that is as time'y as possib'e. In another embodiment, the link provided to allow viewing of an advertisement for a used vehide is in the form of a URL that identifies a representation of the web page.

The term "representation of a web page" may refer to the page as it is directly retrieved from the website hosting the web page, to a cached copy of the web page which was retrieved from the website at a timepoint prior to the display of the link and which may or may not be modified to enab'e the page to be displayable in a form as close as possible to the original, or to a page served up by a proxy server which may or may not cache copies of the web page. In this case when the user clicks on a link thus related to a representation of the web page in order to view a a particular advertisement related to the set of results, the data collection component first makes a retrieval request for the given page to the website that hosts that page, and checks whether it is accessible and whether the advertised price has changed since the page was last retrieved. In the case that it s inaccessible, the system instead serves up to the user its cached verson of the web page. In the case that ft is accessible and has not has changed, the user is served up a current version of the web page. In this way, the user can determine information about a wider set of advertisements than may be otherwise available.

In the case that the page is accessible but key information has changed, in the preferred embodiment key information being any information about the vehicle currently being displayed to the user in conjunction with the said link, the system is configured to provide concurrent'y with the current advertisement a message indicating that the page has recently changed and inidicating the nature of the change. In this way the user's confidence in the data provided by the system can be preserved despite apparent inconsistencies between the stored information and the current version of the advertisement.

THE DATA COLLECTION COMPONENT

In the preferred embodiment, the data stored on the object record database 35 is collected by a data collection component 25 in pre-formatted form via downloads of object record information from providers of websites that advertise vehicles for sale. In this way a reliable up-to-date record of information related to website pages advertising used vehicles can be provided. The data indicates the date at which the advertisement was published on the website, and provides a link to the advertisement. Data is also downloaded to indicate a change in the published details, such as a owering of price, or the date or time of withdrawal of an advertisement from public view, or details related to the sale of the vehicle such as purchase price or date of sale, with the information about such changes being stored and used to update the information related to existing vehicles in the database.

It is recognized that in practice, for an application retrieving information r&ated to a plurality of website pages from a number of websites, a direct feed with information related to a plurality of websfte pages on a particular websfte may not always be available for that particular website, either because of practical issues (e.g. the website proprietors may not be able to provide it) or for economic reasons (it may be a more expensive option than the alternative described below) and in the preferred embodiment, a second mechanism is employed which retrieves re'evant web pages directly. Using this second mechanism, one or more sets of data is acquired via retrieval of the pages on vehicle sales websites and automatic extraction of the information available in the content or markup of said web pages. Techniques and too's to automatically retrieve such information are well known. An examp'e of such a tool is GNU Wget, information about which is available at http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/ or by searching for "gnu wget" on any well-known internet search engine. In one embodiment the data is collected using routines specific to the given site using the CPAN LWP and CPAN XML modules which are avai'able for download via the site http://search.cpan.org/ In one embodiment, the websites from which information is retrieved uniquely identify each object advertisement page via an identifier which is indicative of the order in which the advertisements on the site have been processed on the website concerned (for example, an integer value that is incremented to create an id for each new advertisement) and thus there may be an indication, or rough indication of the temporal order in which advertisements have been created or published on the website. In this case, the identifier can be used as an attribute value that helps define the temporal ordering of selected object records, or used in conjunction with information about dates or times that the object was first advertised to help identify a temporal ordering or partial tempora' ordering in relation to objects for which information was identified from different websites, for exampfe by identifying two identifiers from different websites where the object identified in each case shares a common date as the value of the attribute "date first advertised".

In another embodiment, a standard search results page is retrieved from the public pages on the site which indicates the most recent advertisements on the site and, by dentifying links on this page, the URLS to corresponding advertisement pages of objects and the identifiers used on that website for each of those object advertisement pages are extracted, for example by identifying strings that occur in the search page only in URLs for advertisement pages, and by identifying strings in said URLS that identify an advertisement id within the URL. The data col'ection component then attempts to retrieve pages using a plurality of such identifiers, by utilising a template URL to create a page link specific to a given identifier. In that embodiment, the data coUection component first generates a URL corresponding to the highest identifier integer thus discovered, and then attempts to retrieve the corresponding web page for each identifier value in the range between the thus-discovered identifier and the closest value of identifier already existing on the database of retrieved data by successively decrementing the identifier integer, using URLs generated from templates using those particular identifiers. For example, a template of the form "http:/fimlahsautos.co.uk/vehicles.pl?id=%s" may be converted to a URL for a website advertising vehicles by replacing the string "%s" by a particular advertisement id "987123", or hypothesised id in the case where the page access is made speculatively, to give the URL "http:l/imlahsautos.co.uk/vehicles.pl?id=9871 23". In one embodiment the data collection component queries the websites daily to determine whether any of the know pages have expired, withdrawn or been changed, making any re-retrievals if necessary, and records this information on the database, updating specific object attributes if necessary. In another embodiment the data collection component attempts to retrieve pages corresponding to specific but not yet encountered identifiers, for example to fifi "gaps" in fts set of records, or to investigate whether new pages may be avaable that have not been identified on the ste in other ways (by speculatively making page requests using URLs encoding identifiers in a range close to values of known identifiers, where the request s likely to succeed if such a page exists).

In an embodiment where web pages are retrieved, the data collection routine scans or parses the page to identify regularfties in the page structure or content that are indicative of information that can be extracted. For example, one such webste may include in its pages a URL with argument information that encodes the identifier and attributes of a particular object. For example the relative URL "/page.php?id= 123894231 232&year=2002&fuel=Petrol&trans=Automatic&price=4, 500" may be used to identify that the vehicle identified on that site as 12389423123 has attribute values of "2002" for year, "Petrol" for fuel type, "Automatic" for transmission and "4500" for the se'ling price.

In another example, the presence of a particular string of characters such as "<li>Engine Size<" may indicate that in proximity to that string may exist information about engine size, for examp'e as the content of the immediately following HML element or as the content on the line immediately following the identified line in the file caching the web page.

In another example, the form of the data may indicate its type, for example, a string of characters of the form ">[number] miles<" may indicate that [number] is representative of the mileage of that vehicle (where [number] in the previously-mentioned string represents the occurrence of a particular number, for example ">12,300 mes<").

In another example, the values of one attribute or set of attributes on the page may indicate the meaning of other attributes. For example, the determination that the make of the object is "Ford" and the mode' is "Focus" be used in a context-dependent rule of the form: if the make and model are known to be "Ford" and "Focus" respectively, then the occurrence of a substring "Ford Focus LX" in the <title> element of the markup on the advertisement page indicates that the vehicle has a subtype attribute value of "LX".

In another example, the occurrence of a known value of a known attribute can be ascertained from its form or context. For example, the existence of the character string "<li>Red</li>" may be used on certain contexts (such as the web page for the vehicle on a particu'ar website) to ascertain that the value of the attribute "colour" for this object is "Red".

THE SELECTION COMPONENT

In the preferred embodiment, the selection component 20 identifies from the information available for item being assessed, the information relevant to the selection of a subset of object records from the object record database.

The processing for selection component 20 is given in flowchart form in FIG. 2.

In all the following descriptions of matching of attribute values, differences between upper and lower case are ignored. For example, the attribute values "FORD" and "Ford" would be deemed to match each other. This is not a necessary aspect of the invention, but can be useful in enhancing robustness in face of the integration of data from disparate sources, and is made explicit in this explanation for ease of understanding.

The selection component utzes a comparison function to extract records from the object record database 35 which match the information about the item as follows.

An exact match is required in the comparison at step 70 for the following: make model body type transmission type number of doors fu& type subtype either of calendar year or registration year An approximate match is required in the comparison at step 70 as follows: Engine size: within 100 cc of the item engine size Postcode: proximity calculation yields a value less than 15 miles Mileage: must be within 5% of the item mileage From the records avai'able in the object record database, the selection component records at step 90 information indicative of the set of records that match the above specification, and makes that information available to the weighting component at step 100.

THE WEIGHTING COMPONENT

In the preferred embodiment, the weighting component 30 accesses the information provided by the selection component 20 and calcu'ates a weighting value for each of the objects in the set indicated by the selection component.

The processing for weighting component 30 is given in flowchart form in FIG 3.

The following a'gorithm is used at step 120 to calculate the weighting for each object.

1. Set the weighting to the recorded selling price of the vehicle.

2. If the proximity value is greater than 10.0, multiply the weighting by 1.05 3. If the mileage is over 3% higher than the item mileage, multiply the weighting by 1.5 4. If the paint type on both the object and item records is "metallic" muftiply the weighting by 0.95 5. If the mi'eage is over 4% less than the item mileage then multiply the weighting by 0.98 6. If the advertisement for this object was placed more than six weeks ago, multiply the weighting by 1.2 At step 130 a further test is carried out for the purposes of filtering out ow-grade results causes by the existence of unreliable object data, by rejecting any weighting less than 25 or greater than 500,000.

If test 130 is successful the information about the weighting of the object is stored at step 140.

The weighting component 30 then makes the information about the weighting of all the objects for which the weighting was in range available at step 150 to the results component 40.

n this embodiment the weighting function and the comparison function are described separately, afthough ft wifi be recognized that the invention can also be practiced in a configuration that combines the weighting function and the comparison function into a single function which can calculate weightings for objects in the process of making a selection in relation to the object.

THE RESULTS COMPONENT

The results component 40 accesses the information provided by the weighting component 30 and the object record database 35 and makes a selection of information to provide to presentation component 50.

n the preferred embodiment, the results component sorts the weighted object records by weighting and selects the ten records with the lowest weighting. In the case that there are less than ten records in the set, all the records in the set are selected.

The results component 40 then ranks the records by ascending price, with the object with the lowest price being first in the list. Where two items have the same price, the one with the lower weight is listed first. Where both items have the same price and weight, the one with the closer proximity is listed first. In the case where all the aforementioned values are identical for two objects, if only one of the objects has the attribute metallic for paint type and the item being assessed also has metallic for paint type, then the object with metallic paint type is ranked more highly. In other cases, the results component uses the order provided by weighting component 30, which in this embodiment is arbitrary in this case for identical weighting.

The results component 40 then selects the first five objects in the ranking and makes the information about these vehicles and their ranking available to the presentation component 50. Where there are less than five vehicles in the ranking, all the vehicles in the ranking are made available to the presentation component.

THE PRESENTATION COMPONENT

The presentation component accesses the information made available by the results component 40 and information on the object record database 35 and makes it available in the form of a web page with a table isting the vehicles, in rank order, and indicating, where available, for each one: Make Model Subtype Body type Transmission Doors Fuel type Year Registration Mileage Proximity Date first advertised URL5 of any web pages identified as advertising this vehicle Where the attribute values are common to all records (e.g. make, model, transmission) the display module lists these attributes once only, above the list of ranked vehicles.

In the preferred embodiment, informatbn indicative of the value of the item is presented in the form of a table of vehicles, sting a set of vehicles that are identified by the weighting function as most similar to the item in question, and for each one listing the advertised price of the vehicle. In another embodiment, as well as the list of prices of similar vehicles being indicative of the value of the item, a single value is also calculated which is the average of the set of values, and is displayed. For purposes of clarity, it should be explained that information indicative of a value of the item may take a variety of forms including but not limited to: a set of values related to objects identified as similar to the item (for example the above table of vehides details); and as a single value (for example the above average of the set of values, or the value related to an exemplar vehicle from the set of vehicles).

ALTERNATIVE EMBODIMENTS

In another embodiment, statistical information is also made available, such as the highest and lowest prices found within given proximities (for example within five miles, fifteen miles and one hundred miles), mileage ranges (for example within 10, 50 and 1000 miles of the item's recorded mileage) or within a range or dates of publication of the advertisement for the object (for example within one week, two weeks and one month).

In another embodiment the invention operates to process a list of items to be assessed, and the presentation component produces a report for the processed list of items, listing the calculated settlement prices for items in the list of items.

In another embodiment the calculated settlement price is accompanied by a confidence measure based on information about the number of matching records, their weighting, the proximity value or recency values calculated for the object records used to make the calculation, or other information used in the process of determining the setflement price. In one embodiment the confidence is calculated as a percentage of the vehicles in the set of vehicles whose value is within 30% of the average value of the set of vehicles, and this information is used to accept the valuation if the confidence is 80% or higher, and to reject the valuation as unreliable otherwise. In another embodiment, the information is used to determine whether to output a warning to signal that human intervention is needed in the process, or a stop signal to prevent any settlement being processed further without human intervention or further processing to make checks. In that embodiment, the calculated value is rejected as unreliable and a signal generated to indicate the need for human intervention, if the value calculated is more than ten percent different from a valuation for the item calculated by other means or if the confidence is less that 80%.

In one embodiment, the data collection component requests from a website a search result page or set of pages, and extracts from them the URLs corresponding to advertisement pages, for example by recognizing that they have a specific form (eg. containing the parameter "advertlD" as an argument) or by recognizing them from context (eg. by identifying that the string "class=advertlink" identifies style instructions in the markup that occur only in relation to advertisement links) retrieving any advertisement pages not already retrieved.

In another embodiment, the data collection component re-retrieves advertisement pages daily in order to check whether they are still publicly available and in order to identify any changes in details such as price changes. As well as using this information to update or delete records from the database, it stores information indicating the nature of any updates, such as price information as well as related information such as vehicle, owner or location details, and uses this information to enable statistical reporting of trends, eg. to identify changes in trends related to price reduction that might be valuable to an end user in the early identification of market trends or socia' trends. In that embodiment the system calculates and displays the percentage of the identified set of vehicles whose price has changed within two weeks of the advertisement being identified, and the average size of that price change, as potential indicators of a change in demand.

In another embodiment the presentation component is configured to produce an estimate of the value of the item by calculating and displaying the average of the prices reported by the presentation module, preferentially allowing the user to review and refine the result by selecting or deselecting particular objects whose price should be included or excluded from the calculation. In a further embodiment, the user is enabled to adjust the set of results shown by altering the parameters used to select objects or to w&ght objects. For examp'e, by allowing the user to change the age-range or mileage-range of vehides selectable and redisplay the results of the change in specification, and by allowing the user to modify the percentage by which the weighting is affected by identifying an object that has the same paint type (metallic or standard) as the item.

In an alternative embodiment the weightings are affected by differences in age between the item and the objects under consideration, by increasing the weighting by thirty percent for any vehicle for which both the year of registration and the registration plate are different from and older than those of the item under consideration, and by ten percent in the case where one of registration year and registration plate are different from and o'der than those of the item. In another embodiment the weightings are affected by similarities in mileage between the item and the vehic'es under consideration, by calculating the difference between the mileage of the item and of the vehicle under consideration as a percentage of the mileage of the item, and increasing the weighting by that percentage. In another embodiment the weightings are affected by proximity of the item to the vehides under consideration, by increasing the weighting by one percent for every five mes in distance between the location of the ftem and that of the vehicle under consideration. tn another embodiment, the weighting s increased by thirty percent where the tern engine size is greater than that of the vehicle under consideration and increased by ten percent where the item engine size is smaller.

In another embodiment the system is configured to generate letters or emails offering settlement based on the information generated by the system, for example, by taking the average of the top five vehicle prices identified by results component 40 and generating letters or emails offering a settlement using that value, optionally accompanied by statistical information or references to the vehicles concerned, including but not limited to links to web pages advertising them.

In one embodiment, the interface used to control the processing related to the item under consideration is loaded into a user browser in the form of a web page or set of web pages configured to allow the submission to a server of information about the item sufficient to identify the values of the attributes required in order to carry out the selection, weighting and ordering of vehicle records corresponding to vehicles identified as similar to the item, and to allow the information related to the vehicles to be displayed to the user, including a clickable link or links for one or more of the vehicles, where clicking on the link causes the browser retrieve a representation of a web page advertising the vehicle, where the representation is either a web page retrieved directly from the site on which the advertisement originated, in the case where the page is accessible, or the representation is a cached version of the web page, in the case where the page is no longer accessible on the site at which it originated.

In another embodiment the invention is operated to provide an automatic safeguard for other assessment processes, for example, by flagging up where human assessors have made valuations that are inconsistent with the values calculated using the invention. tn one embodiment, if the value provided using method of assessment other than a particular embodiment of the invention is more than 10% higher or lower than the value calculated by operating the said particular embodiment of the invention, a warning is generated to indicate to a human operative that the assessment made by such other methods should be subject to further checking before taking any action in relation to the item being valued.

In another embodiment, the system treats as duplicates and indicates or filters out one more of the duplicated objects where two or more objects have identical sets of attributes but are derived from different vehicle sales websites. In another embodiment, objects are treated as duplicates if they share the same postcode and the attribute values of price, and make, where the mileages recorded for the vehicles are less than 5% different if known and where each of the known attribute values of year, registration plate and engine size for the objects are not inconsistent between the two objects.

In other embodiments, the invention is operated to allow the input of information related to the operation of weighting component 30, the selection component 20 or results component 40 in order to influence the determination of results. For example, in one embodiment, input component 10 is configured to accept information from a human operator that requests that selection component 20 consider objects within a different proximity range or mileage range to the default ranges, to disregard the effect of metallic paint type in object weighting calculations, to specify to results component 40 to rank records primarily on proximity rather than primarily on price, or to request presentation component 50 to display a different maximum number of records by default.

n other embodiments the value of the ftem being assessed is represented in terms of measures other than currency value, such as an amount of time expressed in, for example, hours or fractions of hours, an amount of effort expressed for example in person-hours or fractions of person-hours, commodities suitable for bartering, or any commodities for which a comparative measure can be used to identify or calculate the relative values of objects in a set of objects. In one embodiment, objects have at least one of a plurality of types of value attribute such as a value in a particular currency, or a value specified in terms of another measurable factor such as elapsed-time or effort, and the system uses a conversion function, such as a currency converter to equate value attributes where the units used to measure value in different object records are different, in order to carry out weighting or ranking calculations. In another embodiment, the system utilizes object records which have value information in more than one such unit, or objects that have identical or near-identical sets of attributes but express value in different commodities, to identify a conversion function to use to convert between measures of value. For example, an object record that identifies a service provided by a particular service provider as costing one hour's effort and of costing fifty pounds could use that information to hypothesise that time or currency values of attributes of other instances of services provided by that service provider cou'd also be converted between time and currency by approximately equating them at a rate of fifty pounds per hour.

Claims

CLAIMS1. Apparatus for providing information for the assessment of the value of an item which is a used vehicle, comprising a processor operable to: access information related to a plurality of website pages containing advertisements for used vehicles; store in a database said information related to the plurality of website pages; access usage-related and specification-related information for the item; compare said usage-related and specification-related information for the item with usage-related and specification-related information for said used vehicles, where the usage-related and specification-related information for the used vehicles is derived from the information related to the plurality of website pages; select information identifying a plurality of vehicles identified in the comparison as having similar usage-related information and similar specification-related information to the item; output information identifying links enabling access to representations of website pages that advertise vehicles identified in the selected information; and output information related to the plurality of vehicles indicative of a value of the item where said information includes price-information related to advertisements for vehicles in the plurality of vehicles, and where said price-information related to advertisements is derived from said information related to the plurality of website pages.
2. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the processor is operable to: make requests for search result pages to a website hosting pages in the plurality of website pages, said search result pages containing information identifying website pages advertising used vehicles; retrieve said search result pages; extract from the search result pages information identifying website pages advertising used vehides; make requests to retrieve said website pages advertising used vehicles; extract information related to vehides from said website pages advertising used vehdes where the information related to vehicles includes usage-relatedinformation and specification-related information.
3. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the processor is operable to: make requests to a server in a network of servers for a data feed containing information related to used vehicles being advertised on website pages; retrieve information in said data feed; extract usage-related information for said used vehicles from said data feed information
4. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the processor is operable to: access first information from the database identifying a plurality of previously-accessed website pages, said pages being previously accessed according to claim 1; access second information re'ated to said plurality of previously-accessed website pages, the access of said first information being prior to the access of said second information; update the database using said second information to reflect changes in advertisements in said website pages.
5. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor s biased to prefer vehides for which information indicative of an advertised price related to the vehicle indicates a ower price compared to other vehicles.
6. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processing of the processor is dependent on time-re'ated information refevant to advertisements for used veh ides
7. Apparatus in accordance to daim 1 where the processor compnses a plurality of devices connected via a computer network.
8. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor utilizes information related to the plurality of used vehicles to calculate a weighting for a vehicle using a weighting function.
9. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the processor is operable to: accept from a user information identifying a subset of said plurality of vehicles; and output a signal indicative of a valuation responsive to information related to the subset of the set of used vehicles, where the valuation related to the subset of the plurality of vehicles differs from the valuation related to the plurality of vehicles in accordance with differences between said plurality and said subset.
10. Apparatus in accordance to claim I configured to support refinement of valuation-related information where the processor is operable to: output to a user a signal indicative of a first specification for a selection of a set of used vehicles; output to the user a signal indicative of a valuation of the item dependent on thefirst specification;accept from a user information related to a second specification for a selection of a set of used vehicles; output a signal indicative of a second set of used vehicles related to the secondspecification; andoutput a signal indicative of a valuation of the item dependent on information related to the second set of used vehicles.
11. Apparatus in accordance to daim 1 where the processor is operable to: access time-dependent information about advertisements identified in said plurality of website pages; and utilize the time-dependent information about advertisements in the process of selecting said information identifying a plurality of vehides.
12. Apparatus in accordance to daim 1 where the processor is operable to: access time-dependent information about advertisements identified in said plurality of website pages; and utilize the time-dependent information about advertisements in making the comparison.
13. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the item is an insured item and the processor is configured to enable assessment of the cost of replacing the insured item.
14. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor is operab'e to output a signal indicative of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
15. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor is operab'e to output a signal indicative of information in support of an offer for insurance claim sett'ement.
16. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor is operab'e to output a signal indicative of a communication of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
17. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the pages in the plurality of website pages are located on a plurality of websites.
18. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where said selection is dependent on an ordering function and the information output related to the pluraty of vehicles indicates an ordering of vehicles distinct from an ordering of vehicles indicated by the ordering function.
19. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor is operable to output a signal indicative of a level of confidence associated with a valuation.
20. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the processor is operable to: compare for each of a plurality of vehicles first information related to an advertisement for the vehicle at a first time point and second information related to the advertisement at a second time point; identify differences in price information between the first time point and the second time point; output a signal dependent on said differences in price information indicative of trends related to the price information.
21. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 item where the processor is operable to: make a request for website pages advertising used vehicles, said website pages being identified in said information identifying a plurality of vehicles; retrieve said requested website pages; and update said information identifying a plurality of vehicles using information retrieved in said retrieval.
22. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the processor is operable to output a signal indicative of statistics relevant to a class of objects to which the item belongs.
23. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor s operab'e to output a signal indicative of statistics related to the valuation of the item.
24. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the processor is operab'e to output a signal indicative of statistics related to the advertisement of used vehicles.
25. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the comparison involves price-related information related to the plurality of used vehicles.
26. Apparatus in accordance to daim I where the comparison involves time-related information derived from registration plate information.
27. Apparatus in accordance to daim I where the comparison involves information related to registration date.
28. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the representations of website pages include cached versions of website pages.
29. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the representations of website pages include live versions of website pages.
30. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the selection of information identifying a p'urality of said vehicles is responsive to weightings calculated by a weighting function.
31. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the comparison is responsive to weightings calculated by a weighting function.
32. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the comparison involves engine-related information.
33. Apparatus in accordance to claim 32 where the processor is biased to prefer vehides for which engine-related information is similar to engine-related information related to the item.
34. Apparatus in accordance to daim I where the comparison involves information related to the item relevant to distance between locations.
35. Apparatus in accordance to claim 34 where the processor is biased to prefer vehicles for which information relevant to distance between locations is indicative of a lower distance between locations compared to information relevant to distance between locations r&evant to other vehicles.
36. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the comparison involves mileage-related information.
37. Apparatus in accordance to claim 36 where the processor is biased to prefer vehides for which mileage-related information is similar to mileage-related information related to the item.
38. Apparatus in accordance to claim I configured to assess a valuation of the item where the processor is operable to: identify first information indicative of a first value for the item in accordance to claim 1; access second information indicative of a second value for the item; compare the first information and the second information; and output a signal dependent on the closeness of match between the first valuation and the second valuation.
39. Apparatus in accordance to claim 38 where the processor is operable to output a signal indicative of a need to review a valuation.
40. Apparatus in accordance to claim 1 where the processor is operable to: identify information related to a first advertisement for a used vehicle; identify information related to a second advertisement for a used vehicle; compare vehicle attribute values in the first advertisement with vehicle attributes in the the second advertisement; and output a signal evaluative of whether the advertisements refer to the same used vehicle.
41. Apparatus in accordance to claim 40 where the processor is configured to omit information related to the first advertisement from said information identifying a plurality of vehicles in the case that information related to the second advertisement is included in the selected information identifying a plurality of veh ides.
42. Apparatus in accordance to claim I where the comparison involves time-related information.
43. Apparatus in accordance to claim 42 where the processor is biased to prefer vehicles for which time-related information is similar to time-related information related to the item.
44. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 43 where the processor outputs information related to the pluraUty of vehicles which includes usage-related information
45. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 44 where the processor outputs information related to the pluraty of vehicles which indudes time-related information.
46. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 45 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehides which includes engine-related information.
47. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 46 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehides which includes information related to transmission type.
48. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 47 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes location-related information
49. Apparatus in accordance to any of daim 1 to 48 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehides which includes information related to body type.
50. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 49 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes information related to vehicle registration.
51. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 50 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes information related to number of doors.
52. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 51 where the processor outputs information related to the pluralfty of vehicles which includes information related to subtype.
53. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 1 to 52 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes information related to fuel type.
54. A user browser application operable to provide information suitable for the assessment of the value of an item which is a used vehicle by interacting with apparatus operating within a computer network, said apparatus executing a server-based application and interacting with at least said user browser application, said server-based application comprising a processor operable to: access information related to a plurality of website pages containing advertisements for used vehicles; store in a database said information related to the plurality of website pages; access usage-related and specification-related information for the item from the browser; compare said usage-related and specification-related information for the item with usage-related and specification-related information for said used vehicles, where the usage-related and specification-related information for the used vehicles is derived from the information related to the plurality of website pages; select information identifying a plurality of vehicles identified in the comparison as having similar usage-related information and similar specification-related information to the item; output to the browser information identifying links enabling access to representations of website pages that advertise vehicles identified in the selected information; and output to the browser information related to the plurality of vehicles indicative of a value of the item where said information includes price-information related to advertisements for vehicles in the pluraifty of vehides, and where said pnce-information related to advertisements s derived from said information related to the plurality of website pages.
55. Apparatus in accordance to daim 54 where the processor is operable to: make requests for search result pages to a website hosting pages in the plurality of website pages, said search result pages containing information identifying website pages advertising used vehicles; retrieve said search result pages; extract from the search result pages information identifying website pages advertising used vehicles; make requests to retrieve said website pages advertising used vehicles; extract information related to vehicles from said website pages advertising used vehicles where the information related to vehicles includes usage-relatedinformation and specification-related information.
56. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to: make requests to a server in a network of servers for a data feed containing information related to used vehicles being advertised on website pages; retrieve information in said data feed; extract usage-related information for said used vehicles from said data feed information
57. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to: access first information from the database identifying a plurality of previously-accessed website pages, said pages being previously accessed according to claim 54; access second information related to said plurality of previously-accessed website pages, the access of said first information being prior to the access of said second information; update the database using said second informatbn to reflect changes in advertisements in said websfte pages.
58. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is biased to prefer vehides for which information indicative of an advertised price related to the vehide indicates a ower price compared to other vehicles.
59. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processing of the processor is dependent on time-r&ated information r&evant to advertisements for used vehides.
60. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor comprises a plurality of devices connected via a computer network.
61. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor utilizes information related to the plurality of used vehicles to calculate a weighting for a vehicle using a weighting function.
62. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to: accept from a user information identifying a subset of said plurality of vehicles; and output a signal indicative of a valuation responsive to information related to the subset of the set of used vehicles, where the valuation related to the subset of the plurality of vehicles differs from the valuation related to the plurality of vehicles in accordance with differences between said plurality and said subset.
63. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 configured to support refinement of valuation-related information where the processor is operable to: output to a user a signal indicative of a first specification for a selection of a set of used vehicles; output to the user a signal indicative of a valuation of the item dependent on thefirst specification;accept from a user information related to a second specification for a selection of a set of used vehicles; output a signal indicative of a second set of used vehicles related to the secondspecification; andoutput a signal indicative of a valuation of the item dependent on information related to the second set of used vehicles.
64. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to: access time-dependent information about advertisements identified in said plurality of website pages; and utilize the time-dependent information about advertisements in the process of selecting said information identifying a plurality of vehicles.
65. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to: access time-dependent information about advertisements identified in said plurality of website pages; and utilize the time-dependent information about advertisements in making the comparison.
66. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the item is an insured item and the processor is configured to enable assessment of the cost of replacing the insured item.
67. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to output a signal indicative of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
68. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to output a signal indicative of information in support of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
69. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor s operable to output a signal indicative of a communication of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
70. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the pages in the plurality of website pages are located on a plurality of websites.
71. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where said selection is dependent on an ordering function and the information output related to the plurality of vehicles indicates an ordering of vehicles distinct from an ordering of vehicles indicated by the ordering function.
72. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to output a signal indicative of a level of confidence associated with a valuation.
73. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to: compare for each of a plurality of vehicles first information related to an advertisement for the vehicle at a first time point and second information related to the advertisement at a second time point; identify differences in price information between the first time point and the second time point; output a signal dependent on said differences in price information indicative of trends related to the price information.
74. Apparatus in accordance to daim 54 ftem where the processor s operab'e to: make a request for websfte pages advertising used vehides, said website pages being dentified in said information identifying a puraty of vehicles; retrieve said requested website pages; and update said information identifying a plura'ity of vehicles using information retrieved in said retrievaL
75. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operab'e to output a signa' indicative of statistics re'evant to a dass of objects to which the item belongs.
76. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operab'e to output a signa' indicative of statistics related to the valuation of the item.
77. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operab'e to output a signal indicative of statistics related to the advertisement of used vehicles.
78. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the comparison involves price-re'ated information related to the puraity of used vehides.
79. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the comparison invokies time-re'ated information derived from registration p'ate information.
80. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the comparison invokies information related to registration date.
81. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the representations of website pages indude cached versions of website pages.
82. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the representations of website pages indude ve versions of website pages.
83. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the s&ection of information identifying a plurality of said vehides is responsive to weightings cacuated by a weighting function.
84. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the comparison is responsive to weightings calculated by a weighting function.
85. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 configured to support refinement of a valuation where the browser app'ication is operable to: access a first set of information re'ated to vehicles re'ated to the item; make a first ca'culation using the first set of information; output a first signal related to the first calculation indicative of a first value of the item; access a second set of information r&ated to vehicles related to the item indicative of a modificaton of the first information; make a second cacuation using the second set of information; and output a second signal re'ated to the second calculation indicative of a second va'ue of the item.
86. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the browser application lists vehicles in the puraity of vehides in a order distinct from an ordering indicated by the processor.
87. Apparatus in accordance to daim 54 where the comparison invo'ves engine-re'ated information.
88. Apparatus in accordance to claim 87 where the processor is biased to prefer vehides for which engine-related information is similar to engine-related information related to the item.
89. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the comparison involves information related to the item relevant to distance between locations.
90. Apparatus in accordance to claim 89 where the processor is biased to prefer vehides for which information relevant to distance between locations is indicative of a lower distance between locations compared to information relevant to distance between locations re'evant to other vehicles.
91. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the comparison involves mileage-related information.
92. Apparatus in accordance to claim 91 where the processor is biased to prefer vehides for which mileage-related information is similar to mileage-related information related to the item.
93. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 configured to assess a valuation of the item where the processor is operable to: identify first information indicative of a first value for the item in accordance to claim 54; access second information indicative of a second value for the item; compare the first information and the second information; and output a signal dependent on the closeness of match between the first valuation and the second valuation.
94. Apparatus in accordance to daim 93 where the processor s operable to output a signal indicative of a need to review a valuation.
95. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the processor is operable to: identify information related to a first advertisement for a used vehicle; identify information related to a second advertisement for a used vehicle; compare vehicle attribute values in the first advertisement with vehicle attributes in the the second advertisement; and output a signal evaluative of whether the advertisements refer to the same used vehicle.
96. Apparatus in accordance to claim 95 where the processor is configured to omit information related to the first advertisement from said information identifying a plurality of vehicles in the case that information related to the second advertisement is included in the selected information identifying a plurality of vehdes.
97. Apparatus in accordance to claim 54 where the comparison involves time-related information.
98. Apparatus in accordance to claim 97 where the processor is biased to prefer vehicles for which time-related information is similar to time-related information related to the item.
99. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 98 where the processor outputs information related to the pluraUty of vehicles which includes usage-related information.
100. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 99 where the processor outputs information related to the puraty of vehides which ncIudes time-r&ated information
101. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 100 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes engine-related information.
102. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 101 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which indudes information related to transmission type.
103. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 102 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes location-related information.
104. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 103 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which indudes information related to body type.
105. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 104 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which indudes information related to vehicle registration.
106. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 105 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which indudes information related to number of doors.
107. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 106 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which indudes information related to subtype.
108. Apparatus in accordance to any of claim 54 to 107 where the processor outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which indudes information related to fuel type.
109. A method for providing information suitable for the assessment of the value of an item which is a used vehide, the method comprising processor means carrying out the steps of: accessing information related to a plurality of website pages containing advertisements for used vehicles; storing in a database said information related to the plurality of website pages; accessing usage-related and specification-related information for the item; comparing said usage-related and specification-related information for the item with usage-related and specification-related information for said used vehicles, where the usage-related and specification-related information for the used vehicles is derived from the information related to the plurality of website pages; selecting information identifying a plurality of vehicles identified in the comparison as having similar usage-related information and similar specification-related information to the item; outputting information identifying links enabling access to representations of website pages that advertise vehicles identified in the selected information; and outputting information related to the plurality of vehicles indicative of a value of the item where said information includes price-information related to advertisements for vehicles in the plurality of vehicles, and where said price-information related to advertisements is derived from said information related to the plurality of website pages.
110. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of accessing information related to the pluralfty of website pages by carrying out the steps of: making requests for search result pages to a website hosting pages in the plurality of website pages, said search result pages containing information identifying website pages advertising used vehides; retrieving said search result pages; extracting from the search result pages information identifying website pages advertising used vehicles; making requests to retrieve said website pages advertising used vehicles; extracting information related to vehicles from said website pages advertising used vehicles where the information related to vehicles includes usage-relatedinformation and specification-related information.
111. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of accessing information related to the plurality of website pages by carrying out the steps of: making requests to a server in a network of servers for a data feed containing information related to used vehicles being advertised on website pages; retrieving information in said data feed; extracting usage-related information for said used vehicles from said data feed information
112. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the further steps of: accessing first information from the database identifying a plurality of previously-accessed website pages, said pages being previous'y accessed according to claim 109; accessing second information related to said plurality of previously-accessed website pages, the access of said first information being prior to the access of said second information; updating the database using said second information to reflect changes in advertisements in said websfte pages.
113. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means prefers vehides for which information indicative of an advertised price related to the vehide indicates a ower price compared to other vehicles.
114. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processing of the processor means is dependent on time-related information relevant to advertisements for used vehicles.
115. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means comprises a plurality of devices connected via a computer network.
116. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means utilizes information related to the plurality of used vehicles to calculate a weighting for a vehicle using a weighting function.
117. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the steps of: accepting from a user information identifying a subset of said plurality of vehicles; and outputting a signal indicative of a valuation responsive to information related to the subset of the set of used vehicles, where the valuation related to the subset of the plurality of vehicles differs from the va'uation related to the plurality of vehicles in accordance with differences between said plurality and said subset.
118. A method in accordance to claim 109 to support refinement of valuation-related information where the processor means carries out the steps of: outputting to a user a signal indicative of a first specificatbn for a selection of a set of used vehicles; outputting to the user a signal indicative of a valuation of the item dependent onthe first specification;accepting from a user information related to a second specification for a selection of a set of used vehicles; outputting a signal indicative of a second set of used vehicles related to thesecond specification; andoutputting a signal indicative of a valuation of the item dependent on information related to the second set of used vehicles.
119. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the steps of: accessing time-dependent information about advertisements identified in said plurality of website pages; and utilizing the time-dependent information about advertisements in the process of selecting said information identifying a plurality of vehicles.
120. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the steps of: accessing time-dependent information about advertisements identified in said plurality of website pages; and utilizing the time-dependent information about advertisements in making the comparison.
121. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the item is an insured item and the processor means is configured to enable assessment of the cost of replacing the insured item.
122. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means cames out the step of outputting a signal indicative of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
123. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of outputting a signal indicative of information in support of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
124. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of outputting a signal indicative of a communication of an offer for insurance claim settlement.
125. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the pages in the plurality of website pages are located on a plurality of websites.
126. A method in accordance to claim 109 where said selection is dependent on an ordering function and the information output related to the plurality of vehicles indicates an ordering of vehicles distinct from an ordering of vehicles indicated by the ordering function.
127. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of outputting a signal indicative of a level of confidence associated with a valuation.
128. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the further steps of: comparing for each of a plurality of vehicles first information related to an advertisement for the vehicle at a first time point and second information related to the advertisement at a second time point; identifying differences in price information between the first time point and the second time point; outputting a signal dependent on said differences in price information indicative of trends related to the price information.
129. A method in accordance to c'aim 109 where the processor means carries out the steps of: making a request for website pages advertising used vehicles, said website pages being identified in said information identifying a puraity of veh ides; retrieving said requested website pages; and updating said information identifying a puraity of vehides using information retrieved in said retrievaL
130. A method in accordance to daim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of outputting a signal indicative of statistics re'evant to a dass of objects to which the item b&ongs.
131. A method in accordance to daim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of outputting a signa' indicative of statistics re'ated to the va'uation of the item.
132. A method in accordance to daim 109 where the processor means carries out the step of outputting a signa' indicative of statistics related to the advertisement of used vehicles.
133. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison involves price-related information related to the plurality of used vehicles.
134. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison involves time-related information denved from registration plate information.
135. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison involves information related to registration date.
136. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the representations of website pages include cached versions of website pages.
137. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the representations of website pages nclude live versions of website pages.
138. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the selection of information identifying a plurality of said vehicles is responsive to weightings calculated by a weighting function.
139. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison is responsive to weightings calculated by a weighting function.
140. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison involves engine-related information.
141. A method in accordance to claim 140 where the processor means prefers vehicles for which engine-related information is similar to engine-related information related to the item.
142. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison involves information related to the item relevant to distance between locations.
143. A method in accordance to claim 142 where the processor means prefers vehides for which information r&evant to thstance between locations s indicative of a lower distance between locations compared to information relevant to distance between locations relevant to other vehides.
144. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison involves mileage-related information.
145. A method in accordance to claim 144 where the processor means prefers vehides for which mileage-related information is similar to mileage-related information related to the item.
146. A method in accordance to daim 109 to assess a valuation of the item where the processor means carries out the steps of: identifying first information indicative of a first value for the item in accordance todaim 109; accessing second information indicative of a second value for the item; comparing the first information and the second information; and outputting a signal dependent on the closeness of match between the first valuation and the second valuation.
147. A method in accordance to claim 146 where the processor means carries out the step of outputting a signal indicative of a need to review a valuation.
148. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the processor means carries out the steps of: identifying information related to a first advertisement for a used vehicle; identifying information related to a second advertisement for a used vehicle; comparing vehicle attribute values in the first advertisement with vehicle attributes in the the second advertisement; and outputting a signal evaluative of whether the advertisements refer to the same used vehicle.
149. A method in accordance to claim 148 where the processor means carries out the step of omitting information related to the first advertisement from said information identifying a plurality of vehicles in the case that information related to the second advertisement is included in the selected information identifying a plurality of vehicles.
150. A method in accordance to claim 109 where the comparison involves time-related information.
151. A method in accordance to claim 150 where the processor means prefers vehicles for which time-related information is similar to time-related information related to the item.
152. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 151 where the processor means outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes usage-related information.
153. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 152 where the processor means outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes time-related information.
154. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 153 where the processor means outputs information related to the plurality of vehicles which includes engine-related information.
155. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 154 where the processor means outputs information related to the puraty of vehicles which includes information related to transmission type.
156. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 155 where the processor means outputs information related to the puraty of vehicles which includes location-related information.
157. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 156 where the processor means outputs information related to the p'urality of vehicles which indudes information related to body type.
158. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 157 where the processor means outputs information r&ated to the p'urality of vehicles which includes information related to vehicle registration.
159. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 158 where the processor means outputs information related to the p'urality of vehicles which includes information related to number of doors.
160. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 159 where the processor means outputs information related to the p'urality of vehicles which includes information related to subtype.
161. A method in accordance to any of claim 109 to 160 where the processor means outputs information related to the p'urality of vehicles which includes information related to fuel type.
162. Program instructions for programming processor means to carry out a method in accordance to claim 109.
163. A storage medium for storing program nstrucUons n accordance to cam 109.
164. A signa' carrying program instructions in accordance to daim 109.