WO2008098592A1

WO2008098592A1 - Method and system for redirecting a request according to a profile

Info

Publication number: WO2008098592A1
Application number: PCT/EP2007/001321
Authority: WO
Inventors: René Schweier
Original assignee: Hurra Communications Gmbh
Priority date: 2007-02-15
Filing date: 2007-02-15
Publication date: 2008-08-21

Abstract

In order to provide a method and a system that enable to increase the relevance of resources (6) that can be requested from a client (7) in a client-server system (1a; 1b), to reduce the load of a communications network, and to reduce the workload of servers (5, 12; 13) that is caused by handling information requests that usually result in irrelevant information transmissions, a method, a server (2), a client-server system (1a; 1b) and a computer program are suggested. The inventive method, the server (2), the client-server system (1a; 1b) and the computer program enable to select a resource (6) upon an information request from a client (7), wherein the request is initiated by a user (11) instructing the client (7) to transmit an URI (3) via a communications system (4). In consequence of the transmitted URI (3) at least one profile information (15) that is attached to the client (7) is evaluated. The selection server (2) then selects an URI (3) out of a plurality of URIs (3). The selection is based on an evaluation of the profile information (15). The profile information (15) preferably describes a characteristic of the client (7) or the user (11). Having selected an URI (3), the information request is redirected to the resource (6) that is defined by the selected URI (3).

Description

Title :

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR REDIRECTING A REQUEST ACCORDING TO A PROFILE

Specification

Background of the invention

The present invention relates to a method for selecting a resource upon an information request from a client.

The present invention also relates to a server in a communications system and to a client-server system for selecting a resource upon an information request from a client . The invention further relates to a computer programme which can be run on a client-server system, in particular on a client and/or on a server.

A multiplicity of clients and servers communicate by means of communications systems, in particular by means of the internet. Together, they form a client-server system, in particular the multi-media information system, which is commonly known as the WWW (World Wide Web) .

Within the client-server system several resources are provided by the servers for request by the clients. These resources particularly define objects that can be requested for download by clients and tasks that can be performed upon request of a client. Such objects could be any kind of information, stored in any kind of data format. Examples of this type of resources or objects are files containing text, picture, sound and/or video information. This kind of resources is often transmitted via so-called network pages. Within the WWW several protocols exist for transmitting network pages, e.g. HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) for network pages or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) for files in various file formats .

Resources that cause a server to perform a specific task are often implemented using some kind of computer programme that is executed on the server or the client in order to fulfil the requested task. These computer programmes are often realized as so-called scripts or applets.

Usually, each resource within a client-server system can be uniquely identified using a so-called URI ("Uniform Resource Identifier" or "Universal Resource Identifier"). Within the WWW an URI can be realized as an URL (Uniform Resource Locator) which is composed e.g. of the name of the server providing the specific network page, a directory, and a name associated with the network page. In this context, the network page is often a so-called HTML- document, wherein HTML (Hypertext Mark-Up Language) is a standardized page-description language enabling to describe the content and appearance of a network page.

Within a file that can be requested from a server, further files or resources can be cited. These resources can also be marked indicating that these resources can also be requested by a client. Within a HTML-document these resources are specified via URLs and are referred to as so- called links. In order to request the resource or document related to a link, the link can be activated. If a link is displayed on a client, preferably to a user, by means of a so-called browser, the user can activate the link such that the related resource, e.g. the related network page, will be requested from the server.

However, resources are often not statically stored on a server, but are dynamically generated upon request of a client. If, for example, the server is a so-called search engine, it determines a search result depending on one or more keywords that are transmitted from a client to the search engine, the keywords defining a topic or other characteristics of the desired information.

In order to transmit the search result from the search engine to the client, often a HTML-document is dynamically generated, the HTML-document comprising several links, wherein each link is related to a resource that matches the user's search request. However, most often the search results do not exactly contain the information that are searched by the user, causing the user to activate various links in order to check the search results and find the desired information by manually examining each search result. This requires several information requests submitted from the client to several servers and several pieces of information, e.g. network pages, that have to be transmitted from the servers to the client. Usually, a bigger part of the information that is transmitted from servers to clients is not of any interest to the user operating the client. Nevertheless, transmitting this irrelevant information intensively increases the load of the communications network. Furthermore, it is a time consuming task for the user to manually inspect the search results in order to find the desired information.

In order to decrease the amount of irrelevant information, several techniques are known. One technique is to further improve the search algorithms that are executed on the search engines in order to increase the relevance of the search results.

It is also known to select further information and include this information to network pages on which the search results are transmitted to the user. This further information usually is not explicitly searched by the user, but is expected to be relevant to the user. To achieve this, it is known to select the additional information based on characteristics of the user. Usually, these characteristics are provided by the user, e.g. when registering at a so-called web-portal or when entering a members area of a server. Basically, the more links that have to be activated by a user in order to find a desired resource, the larger the amount of irrelevant information that is transmitted via the communications network. Naturally, this increases the load of the communications network without any benefit for the user.

If a user needs access to a specific resource, e.g. a specific piece of information, the user often starts with requesting a so-called homepage of a specific server, e.g. an internet news magazine or an online shop. On the homepage often a table of contents is listed that enables the user to find the desired information. However, due to the extremely large amount of information that can be retrieved from a specific server, nowadays, it still needs a large number of different information requests from the client in order to find the desired resource or information. Moreover, it needs a lot of time to find the desired information. However, frequently the user will not even find the desired information and will thus select another server in order to find the desired information.

Since the extremely large number of information that is provided by a server, even if a user knows that the desired information is located on the server, it is often difficult to find this information. And even if the user had already received this information from this specific server some time ago, it is often difficult to remember the sequence of links that have to be activated to finally request and receive the desired information.

Although it is known to store so-called bookmarks on a client that allow to directly request a specific network page from a server via a so-called deep-link, these bookmarks are usually not updated and are often not arranged in a way that they can be found by the user

Summary of the invention

It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and a system that enable to increase the relevance of resources, and in particular of information, that are transmitted from a server to a client, and thus enables to to reduce the load of a communications network and to reduce the workload of the servers that is caused by handling information requests that usually result in irrelevant information transmissions.

This object is solved by a method for selecting a resource upon an information request from a client, wherein the request is initiated by a user instructing the client to transmit an URI via a communications system.

In consequence of the transmitted URI a at least one profile information that is attached to the client is evaluated. Preferably, the information request is directly transmitted from the client to the selection server. The selection server then selects an URI out of a plurality of URIs.

The selection is based on an evaluation of a profile information, wherein the profile information is attached to the client or the user. The profile information preferably describes a characteristic of the client or the user.

Having selected an URI, the information request is redirected to the resource that is defined by the selected URI. The inventive method enables to dynamically select an URI at least based on an evaluation of profile information that describe characteristics of the client and/or the user instructing the client. In particular, the present invention enables to select resources that are very likely to be highly relevant for the user. This is due to the fact that the profile information can describe a current interest of the user.

Preferably, the profile information is stored on the client or^' at least on a client that is attached to the user. According to one embodiment of the present invention, the profile information is transmitted to the selection server when initiating the request.

According to another embodiment of the present invention, the profile information is transmitted to the selection server in response to a request of the selection server.

The profile information could be stored as a so-called cookie. Generally, a cookie is a set of information that is stored in a memory element attached to the client. Storing the cookie at the client is also called setting the cookie. Such a cookie could e.g. comprise profile information defining how often a user or the client requests a certain network page within a given time interval or the time, when the user has requested the network page the last time.

According to another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the profile information is stored on a profile server. The profile server could be connected to the communications system. Upon request of the selection server, the profile information could then be transmitted from the profile server to the selection server. It is further possible that the profile information is evaluated by the profile server and the result of the evaluation is transmitted to the selection server. This means, that the profile server evaluates the profile information rather than having the profile information evaluated by the selection server.

Profile information can define several kinds of characteristics of the user or the client. Such characteristics include an age of the user, a current location of the user or the client, a specific interest of the user, a user behaviour, e.g. a user reaction upon receiving a certain type of information. A profile information could further describe an interaction of the user with at least one further server. Such interactions could describe whether the user has bought a specific product from an online shop, whether the user has not bought a specific product, how often the user buys several products, the social status, demographic related data, and so forth.

The profile information could further describe a hardware characteristic or a software characteristic of the client. Such characteristics could be a version of a specific software currently implemented on the client or specific hardware that is installed.

In particular, the profile information could describe a keyword, wherein the keyword defines a search that was initiated by the client and/or the user and that was performed by a search engine. Since keywords are entered by a user and transmitted to a search engine in order to retrieve specific information, keywords often allow to determine a specific current interest of the user. Preferably, the selection of the URI is further based on characteristics of the initial information request transmitted from the client. Such characteristics could include the time of day when the information request was initiated. If the information request was initiated by activating a link, the characteristics could further describe a so-called referrer, wherein a referrer defines the URL on which the link was placed.

Preferably, the selectable URIs are classified and the URI is selected to match best the profile information. Alternatively or in addition, the profile information is classified and the URI is selected to match best the class of the profile information. To determine, whether an URI corresponds to a profile information and/or to determine the quality of correspondence, well-known methods from the field of information retrieval and automatic classification, such as document-clustering and keyword- clustering, can be used. With these methods so-called matching functions could be developed and be used for selecting the URI.

Preferably, the information request is redirected from the selection server to another server. This means, that the resource defined by the selected URI is not located on the selection server, but on another server that is connected to the communications system. This enables the selection server to select URIs from several different servers. In particular, this enables to implement a kind of chain- linking, wherein an initial information request is transmitted from the client via several servers and several selection servers until the most relevant resource is selected. According to another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the initially requested information is a homepage of a server. The URI is then selected such that it defines a so-called deep-link to a resource that is associated with the server.

In particular, the resource is stored on the server. This enables a client to request a homepage of a server, the server causes an URI to be selected, wherein the URI is a deep-link to a specific information that is of high relevance to the user or the client. Then, the resource defined via the deep-link is transmitted to the client, instead of transmitting the homepage. This allows to further reduce the load of the communications system, since instead of transmitting a homepage to a user, the network page can be transmitted to the user that is most likely to be of a high interest to the user.

According to another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the initial information request is transmitted to a first server and the first server causes the selection server to select an URI for redirection. The selection server then either transmits the selected URI back to the first server or causes the initial information request of the client to be further redirected according to the selected URI .

In particular, it is conceivable that a user requests a homepage from a server, the server transmits the request to a selection server, the selection server selects an URI and transmits the URI to the first server and the first server transmits the resource to the client. In this case, the selected URI could in particular be a deep-link. The object is also solved by a server in a communications system that acts as a selection server and that is adapted to carry out the tasks of the selection server, as described above.

The object is further solved by a client-server system, wherein the client-server system is designed to execute the inventive method.

The realization of this invention in the form of a computer programme is particularly important. The computer programme can be run on at least one calculating device or a computer, in particular on a server and/or on a client, and is programmed to carry out the inventive method. Parts of the computer programme may be run on different computers, in particular on different servers and clients in order to carry out the inventive method. The invention is, thereby, realized by the computer programme, wherein this computer programme represents the invention in the same sense as the method for the execution of which the computer programme is suitable. The computer programme is preferably stored on a memory element. A memory element may, in particular, be a random-access-memory, a read-only-memory, or a flash- memory. In particular, the memory element is assigned to at least one component of the client-server system.

Further features, possible applications and advantages of the invention can be extracted from the following description of embodiments of the invention which are shown in the drawing. All features described or shown constitute subject-matter of the invention either individually or in arbitrary combination irrespective of their combination in the claims or their dependencies and irrespective of their formulation or representation in the description or in the drawing. In the drawing :

Figure 1 shows an inventive client-server system according to a first embodiment; and

figure 2 shows an inventive client-server system according to a second embodiment.

Figure 1 shows an inventive client-server system Ia, that is suitable to execute the inventive method. The client- server system Ia comprises a selection server 2 that is connected to a communications network 4. The communications network 4 could be the so-called internet. In particular, the communications systems 4 could be operated according to the WWW. The communications system 4 could also be realized as a so-called intranet.

The selection server 2 comprises a plurality of URIs 3. The URIs 3 could be realized as text-strings. In particular, the URIs could be realized as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or URN (Uniform Resource Names), as are known from the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) .

The client-server system Ia further comprises a server 5. The server 5 could be realized as an online-shop or an internet portal or any other information server. The server 5 comprises several resources 6 that can be addressed via an URI 3.

The client-server system Ia further comprises a client 7. The client 7 could be realized as a personal computer (PC) , a handheld (PDA), a mobile communications device or any other device that is known in the art and that is enabled to function as a client. According to the exemplary embodiment shown in figure 1, the client 7 comprises a browser 8 and a memory element 9. A cookie 10 is stored in the memory element 9, the cookie comprising profile information of the client 7 or an user 11.

The client 7 is instructable by the user 11. Therefore, the client 7 provides one or more user interfaces . Such user interfaces are commonly known and could be realized as a display 17, a keyboard 16, a computer mouse, and so forth.

According to one embodiment of the present invention, the user 11 instructs the client 7 to transmit an initial information request. This could be achieve by the user 11 entering an URI or an URL into a specific text field displayed via the browser 8. Alternatively, user 11 could activate a link that is displayed on a network page via the browser 8.

The initial information request is transmitted from the client 7 to the selection server 2. According to one embodiment of the present invention, the client 7 automatically transmits one or more profile information stored in the cookie 10 to the selection server 2.

The selection server 2 evaluates the profile information. Therefore, the selection server classifies the received profile information according to predetermined classification rules. Such classification rules could be implemented using an expert system or other tools known from artificial intelligence. The classification allows to determine a current interest of the user 11 based on the profile information. Therefore, the profile information might comprise an age of the user 11, a location of the user 11, hardware and/or software equipment of the client 7, current time and so forth. In particular, the profile information could comprise one or more keywords that have been entered by user 11 via client 7 (or any other client instructed by user 11) and that have been transmitted to a search engine 12.

The URIs 3 could also be classified. This enables the selection server 2 to determine an URI 3 to match best the profile information of the client 7 or the user 11. This could be achieved by applying techniques known in the art of information retrieval. Usually, such techniques define for each profile information the distance to each URIs 3. According to the distance of the profile information to the URIs 3, the number of available URIs 3, the predetermined classifications, and the number of available profile information, an URl 3 is selected and the initial information request is redirected to the selected URI 3. The URI 3 could identify a resource 6 that is stored on the server 5. If, for example, the server 5 is realized as an online-shop, the initial information request could be redirected to a specific product.

Generally, if server 5 is realized as an information server, the initial information request could be redirected to a specific information that is most likely very relevant for user 11.

One of the basic ideas of the present invention is that the relevance is increased by dynamically selecting an URI 3. This means, that not the information itself is to be selected, but only an URI 3. This further allows server 5 to dynamically change or update resources 6, without any need of notifying the selection server 2.

Preferably, the correlation between the URIs 3 and the resources 6 should be kept such that the classification of the URIs 3 is still valid. This means, that a resource 6 that describes a specific type of information and a specific topic should preferably not be changed such that it would describe another type of information or another topic, assuming that the type of information and the topic are parameters that are used to classify the URIs 3.

Figure 2 shows a client-server system Ib that is also adapted for executing the inventive method. The elements of the client-server system Ib that correspond to elements of the client-server system Ia are denoted using the same reference signs.

In addition to the components already introduces with the client-server system Ia, the client-server system Ib comprises a profile server 13.

The profile server 13 comprises several profiles 14 each profile 14 comprising several profile information 15. Each profile 14 corresponds to a specific user 11 or a specific client 7 of the user 11. The client-server system allows the selection server 2 to retrieve profile information 15 from profile server 13. This could be realized by first identifying user 11 or client 7 and then requesting the profile 14 or profile information 15 that is related to user 11 or client 7.

User 11 or client 7 could be identified via a user ID that has to be entered from user 11. Preferably, the user ID is determined depending on information that is transmitted automatically from the client 7. Such information could be an identification number of the browser 8 or any other software or hardware component installed on the client 7. The identification could also be transmitted via a cookie 10 from the client 7. The profiles 14 could be generated from the profile server 13 using information that is transmitted from several servers 5 or selection servers 2 whenever user 11 or a client 7 instructed by user 11 interacts with the servers 5 or the selection servers 2. This allows to establish a database of profiles 14 containing highly up-to-date profile information 15.

Further embodiments of the present invention are conceivable. In particular, it is conceivable that the user 11 instructs client 7 to request information directly from server 5. Therefore, user 11 could enter an URL, e.g. defining the homepage of server 5, in a text field of browser 8. Upon receiving the information request from the client 7, the server 5 then requests an URI 3 from the selection server 2. This could be achieved by redirecting the initial information request from the client 7 to the selection server 2 and causing the selection server 2 to redirect the initial information request based on the selected URI 3.

However, it is also conceivable that server 5 requests a selected URI 3 from selection server 2 and selection server 2 transmits the selected URI 3 to the server 5. Server 5 then could redirect the initial information request based on the selected URI 3 received from the selection server 2.

In particular, the selected URI 3 could be a deep-link attached to a resource that is located on server 5. Of course, the selected URI 3 could cause a redirection to any other server 5 in the communications network 4.

The embodiments shown in figures 1 and 2 are, of course, just exemplified embodiments. In particular, it is possible to implement selection server 2, search engine 12, profile server 13 and servers 5 in software which means that any combination of selection server 2, servers 5, search engine 12 and profile server 13 could be implemented together on the same hardware server.

Further implementation details are known from the art. For example, it is possible to attach one or more databases 18a, 18b, 18c to anyone of selection server 2, servers 5, search engine 12 and/or profile server 13. These databases 18a, 18b, 18c could be used to store the URIs 3, several resources 6, the profiles 14 and profile information 15.

In particular, several search engines 12 and profile servers 13 and, of course, several selection servers 2 could interact to realize the inventive method.

The inventive method thus enables to dynamically generate, resolve and/or optimise a link, and in particular an URI 3.

To optimise the URI 3, it is conceivable that several indicators are determined. Such indicators define, for example, how often a specific URI 3 was activated or the time between several activations of several URIs 3. If the server 5 is realized as an online-shop, these indicators could further define a number of leads, sales or conversions corresponding to requests of the specific URI 3.

Optimising an URI 3 can thus be realized by modifying the selection process. In particular, one selectable URI 3 could be replaced by another, possibly better performing URI 3. This can be achieved by simply modifying the selection process on the selection server 2. However, there is basically no need to modify the server 5 or any other component of the client-server system. This enables a very- fast and flexible optimisation of an URI.

The inventive method further enables to dynamically select an URI 3 at least based on an evaluation of profile information 15 that describe characteristics of the client 7 and/or the user 11 instructing the client 7. In particular, the present invention enables to select resources 6 that are very likely to be highly relevant for the user 11. This is due to the fact that the profile information 15 can describe a current interest of the user 11.

Claims

RESOURCE ( 6 ) Claims

1. Method for selecting a resource upon an information request from a client (7), wherein

the request is initiated by a user instructing the client (7) to transmit an URI (3) via a communications system (4) ,

in consequence of the transmitted URI (3) a selection server (2) selects an URI (3) out of a plurality of available URIs (3) based on an evaluation of a profile information (15), wherein the profile information (15) is attached to the client (7) or the user (11) , and

the information request is redirected to the resource that is defined by the selected URI (3) .

2. The method of claim 1, characterized in that the profile information (15) is stored on the client (7) and is automatically transmitted to the selection server (2)

when initiating the request and contacting the selection server (2) or

in response to a request of the selection server (2) .

3. The method of claim 1 or 2 , characterized in that the profile information (15) is stored on a profile server

(13) and the profile information (15) is transmitted to the selection server (2) upon request or

the profile information (15) is evaluated by the profile server (13) and the result of the evaluation is transmitted to the selection server (2) .

4. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 3 , characterized in that the profile information (15) describes

an age,

a location,

an interest,

a user (11) behavior,

an interaction of the user (11) with at least one further server (5),

an interaction of the client (7) with at least one further server (5) ,

a hardware characteristic of the client (7),

a software characteristic of the client (7) , or

a keyword, wherein the keyword defines a search that was initiated by the client (7) and performed by a search engine (12) .

5. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 4 , characterized in that the selection of the URI (3) is further based on characteristics of the initial information request.

6. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that the selectable URIs (3) are classified and the URI (3) is selected to match best the profile information (15) .

7. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that the profile information (15) is classified and the URI (3) is selected to match best the class of the profile information (15) .

8. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 7 , characterized in that the URI (3) is selected based upon an evaluation of a plurality of profile information (15) .

9. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 8 , characterized in that the URI (3) is realized as an URL or an URN.

10. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 9 , characterized in that the information request is redirected from the selection server (2) to another server (5) .

11. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 10, characterized in that the initially requested information is a homepage of a server (5) and the selected URI (3) is a deep-link to a resource (6) associated with the server (5) .

12. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 11, characterized in that the initial information request is transmitted to a first server (5) , the first server (5) causes the selection server (2) to select an URI (3) for redirection, and the selection server (2)

transmits the selected URI (3) back to the first server (5) or causes the initial information request of the client (7) to be further redirected to the selected URI (3) .

13. The method of anyone of claims 1 to 12, characterized in that an optimisation is performed to increase the performance of the selectable URIs (3).

14. The method of claim 13, characterized in that the URIs

(3) are optimised depending on an evaluation of at least one indicator, wherein the indicator is attached to URI (3) and the indicator defines the number of requests, the time between two requests, the number of sales, leads or conversions.

15. Server (2, 5) in a communications system (4), wherein the server (2, 5) comprises means for selecting an URI (3) out of a plurality of available URIs (3), based on an evaluation of at least one profile information (15), and the server (2, 5) is programmed to execute a task of a selection server (2) in accordance with any one of the claims 1 through 14.

16. Client-server system (Ia; Ib) for selecting a resource

(6) upon an information request from a client (7), the system comprising

a communications system (4) for transmitting an information request,

a selection server (2) adapted to select an URI (3) out of a plurality of available URIs (3) based on an evaluation of at least one profile information (15) , wherein the profile information (15) is attached to a client (7), - means for redirecting the information request to a resource (6), wherein the resource (6) is defined by the selected URI (3) .

17. The client-server system (Ia; Ib) of claim 16, characterized in that the system comprises means to execute a method according to anyone of claims 1 to 14.

18. Computer program which can be run on a client-server system (Ia; Ib), in particular on a client (7) and/or on a server (2, 5, 12, 13), characterized in that the computer program is programmed to execute a method according to any one of claims 1 to 14.

19. Computer program according to claim 18, characterized in that the computer program is stored on a memory element, wherein the memory element is a disk, a compact disk (CD) , a digitally versatile disk (DVD) , and/or at least one part of a RAM or a ROM that is assigned to the client-server system (Ia; Ib) .