A website is validated. In one implementation, this validation includes providing an identifier and determining whether the identifier appears in a website, resource, or location. Website services are then provided, including providing usage or user feedback data associated with the website; providing an electronic shopping cart or checkout mechanism associated with the website; providing a financial status indicator associated with the website; providing a custom search engine associated with the website; and providing a toolbar associated with the website.

A method for generating a search result includes: receiving, by an information search system, a search request; obtaining, by searching, a plurality of pieces of matching information that match the search request; obtaining a respective amount of user response associated with each of the plurality of pieces of matching information and further obtaining a total amount of user response associated with a respective categories to which each of the plurality of pieces of matching information belongs; and ranking the plurality of pieces of information to generate a search result based on the total amount of user response associated with the respective category to which each of the plurality of pieces of matching information belongs. By using the above technical scheme, a result of more rational ranking of matching information can be displayed to a user when the user performs a search, thus improving experience of the user.

A method of selecting and presenting content based on learned user preferences is provided. The method includes providing a content system including a set of content items organized by genre characterizing the content items, and wherein the set of content items contains microgenre metadata further characterizing the content items. The method also includes receiving search input from the user for identifying desired content items and, in response, presenting a subset of content items to the user. The method further includes receiving content item selection actions from the user and analyzing the microgenre metadata within the selected content items to learn the preferred microgenres of the user. The method includes, in response to receiving subsequent user search input, selecting and presenting content items in an order that portrays as relatively more relevant those content items containing microgenre metadata that more closely match the learned microgenre preferences of the user.

Building and maintaining an accurate and up-to-date global inventory of hardware, software, and telecommunications assets deployed throughout an organization is described. A global inventory warehouse (GIW) receives an identification and physical location of these assets from multiple source systems. Some of these source systems contain information pertaining to the assets that has been manually entered into the source system by a human administrator. Other source systems, meanwhile, contain information that has been automatically collected by the source systems without human intervention. The GIW receives this information from the source systems and stores it within a GIW database. The GIW database may thus contain a global inventory of all or nearly all of the hardware, software, and telecommunications assets distributed throughout the organization. This database may also contain an identification of physical locations within the organization of all or substantially all of these assets.

Embodiments are directed to implementing localized jump lists and to generating a locale-specific jump list. In one scenario, a computer system sends a synchronization request to receive a current contact list that includes a user's contacts. The computer system receives both a synchronized contact list and a locale-specific jump list, which includes jump header sort keys that indicate the relative sorting position of each jump header. The computer system receives a user input indicating that the user has selected a specified jump header and intends to jump to a specified point in the contact list. The computer system then jumps to the user-specified point in the contact list using the jump header sort key that corresponds to the selected jump header in the locale-specific jump list and displays the contact list to the user at the selected jump header that was jumped to using the jump header sort key.

In an internet based system, a method of ranking products includes storing and outputting data identifying a plurality of suggested paradigms. The suggested paradigms each includes a set of suggested weighting factors that represent a specific consumer preference. A consumer selects one of the suggested paradigms and further inputs a set of weighting factors that includes at least one of the suggested weighting factors from the selected paradigm. The consumer thereafter inputs a query related to a product that is received by a server. A server generates and returns a ranking of a plurality of products based on the set of weighting factors input by the consumer and stored data related to a plurality of products, as a response to the query.

A method of selecting and presenting content based on learned user preferences is provided. The method includes providing a content system including a set of content items organized by genre characterizing the content items, and wherein the set of content items contains microgenre metadata further characterizing the content items. The method also includes receiving search input from the user for identifying desired content items and, in response, presenting a subset of content items to the user. The method further includes receiving content item selection actions from the user and analyzing the microgenre metadata within the selected content items to learn the preferred microgenres of the user. The method includes, in response to receiving subsequent user search input, selecting and presenting content items in an order that portrays as relatively more relevant those content items containing microgenre metadata that more closely match the learned microgenre preferences of the user.