An excerpt from the patent specification.
In order to be effective, the URLIT is described in markup language tags embedded in a web document. These tags are part of a disclosed “Universal Advertisement Markup Language” (UAML).
The UET Company parses the user’s web page, and if this page meets certain requirements, it is accepted as a “listing.” The listing can be virtually any type of advertisement–a personal ad, real estate ad, used car ad, want ad–and can even be an Internet auction listing.
When a listing is accepted, a record is created in the UET Company’s relational database complex, and fields of the record are populated with UAML-tagged data in the user’s web page.
Once the record has been created and populated, the user’s listing can be easily found by other users. Other users can visit the UET Company website and perform a search of the UET Company’s databases, which includes the record associated with the given user’s web page. Since the record contains individual fields corresponding to individual UAML nodes in the user’s web page, the record contains much more specific information about the given user’s web page than could be extracted from an HTML page that was not UAML-enabled. Thus, a search through the UET Company site is much more precise than a search through a conventional Web-search engine.
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The Userithm search engine may also include additional fields for user input of data. For instance, users may set their own standards for a particular variable. This technique is most useful for Userithm search engine embodiments that are geared for a particular subject matter, such as real estate. For instance, in a Userithm search engine devoted to real estate, a user may assign a value of “3” to set the standard for the number of bedrooms. Units with three bedrooms score the maximum under this criterion, while units with two bedrooms or four bedrooms score lower, while units with one bedroom or five bedroom score even lower.
Users may also set their own tolerance levels for variation from standards. Thus, the user may set, in the above example, a tolerance of plus or minus one bedroom, such that units with two, three, or four bedrooms are not filtered out of search results, but units with one bedroom or five bedrooms are.
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The barcode reader can also be used in an alternative embodiment optimized for real estate. A URLIT can be encoded in barcode form, placed on a “For Sale” sign that is installed at a property, and then scanned by an interested party. The listing associated with the URLIT is then looked up for more information on the property.
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