WO2000048057A2

WO2000048057A2 - Bookmark search engine

Info

Publication number: WO2000048057A2
Application number: PCT/US2000/003608
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jason Frankovitz
Original assignee: Itlist.Com, Inc.
Priority date: 1999-02-12
Filing date: 2000-02-11
Publication date: 2000-08-17
Also published as: WO2000048057A3; AU3594500A

Abstract

The systems and methods described herein provide improved systems for identifying relevant content on the World Wide Web. The systems generally include two components. The first component is a system that lets users build a collaborative on-line database of bookmarks, with each bookmark being representative of a resource, such as a page, script, media file, or a website maintained on the Internet. The second component is a query mechanism that allows a user to enter a query, such as a search string, and that compares the search string to the online database of bookmarks to identify bookmarks to interest belonging to other users of the service. The bookmarks of interest can be returned to the user as the search results, and therefore the user is provided with that portion of the content of the World Wide Web which other users have deemed to contain information relevant to the query entered by the user.

Description

Bookmark Search Engine

Field of the Invention

The invention provides systems and methods for searching through content on the World Wide Web, or on any similar network, to identify resources of interest.

Background of the Invention

Through the World Wide Web service, the Internet has become an enormous repository of readily accessible information. However, the sheer volume of information maintained on the World Wide Web becomes problematic when someone wishes to identify those resources, or documents that are maintained on the Internet and that are related to a certain topic. The problem is that a simple search request for information stored on the Internet and related to a certain topic returns an enormous volume of information, most of which is extraneous and irrelevant. This problem arises in part from the difficulty that existing Internet search engines have with prioritizing and categorizing documents stored on the World Wide Web. For example, one known technique for categorizing information on the

Internet is to manually search through the contents stored on the Internet and associate with the reviewed content a set of words that represents the information contained on the reviewed pages.

Although the system can work well for correctly identifying the type of information contained on a web page, the system is remarkably slow and therefore only allows for indexing a small portion of the content on the World Wide Web. Alternatively, automated systems which crawl through the content of the Internet can process much greater portions of the Internet, however, these systems rely on computer programs for analyzing the content of web pages and identifying the keywords that represent the information contained in those pages. Unfortunately, these programs are less accurate in their ability to distinguish the actual content contained in the web page and tend to be over-inclusive, leading to pages being indexed into many irrelevant topics.

Accordingly, a problem exists in searching the contents stored on the World Wide Web in that simple search requests are often met with an over-abundance of search results which leads to an information glut, with valuable information being hidden within the volume of irrelevant and useless information. As such, there is a need for improved systems for identifying relevant content on the World Wide Web.

Summary of the Invention

The systems and methods described herein provide improved systems for identifying relevant content on the World Wide Web. The systems generally include two components. The first component is a system that lets users build a collaborative on-line database of bookmarks, with each bookmark being representative of a resource, such as a page, script, media file, or a website maintained on the Internet. The second component is a query mechanism that allows a user to enter a query, such as a search string, and that compares the search string to the online database of bookmarks to identify bookmarks of interest belonging to other users of the service. The bookmarks of interest can be returned to the user as the search results, and therefore the user is provided with that portion of the content of the World

Wide Web which other users have deemed to contain information relevant to the query entered by the user.

In one aspect, a bookmark search engine according to the principles of the invention includes a database having stored therein data representative of a plurality of bookmarks each identifying a resource on a network, the database being connected to a data network, and a query mechanism for allowing a user to enter a search string, from a client connected to the data network, for searching through the database to identify bookmarks associated with the search string.

In a different aspect, a process for searching through content on a data network according to the principles of the invention includes providing a server at which a plurality of users store bookmark data including bookmarks, and information associated with the bookmarks; organizing the bookmark data into a database of searchable information, and providing a search engine program, accessible using a data network, that allows a user to enter a search string, and that employs the search string to identify to the user bookmarks associated with the search string.

A system for identifying information on a data network according to the principles of the invention can include a client; and a server accessible to the client using a data network, the server including a database process that allows the client to store bookmarks in a database; and the server having a query mechanism that allows the client to enter a query for searching for entries within the database, thereby allowing the user to identify information on the data network by identifying bookmarked sites stored with database and associated at the user query.

In a different embodiment, a system for marking search results provided by a search engine may include a client, and a server accessible to the client using a data network, the server including a framing process by which a query is transmitted to a remote search engine and a search result is displayed at the client, the search result including one or more resources, the framing process capturing a bookmarking event relating to one of the one or more resources and using the bookmarking event to determine a relevance of one of the one or more resources.

Other objects of the invention will, in part, be obvious, and, in part, be shown from the following description of the systems and methods shown herein.

Brief Description of the Drawings

The foregoing and other objects and advantages of the invention will be appreciated more fully from the following further description thereof, with reference to the accompanying drawings wherein:

Figure 1 depicts diagrammatically a system according to the invention wherein a plurality of users can access an on-line site for storing and searching through lists of bookmarks;

Figure 2 depicts a page having a plurality of bookmarks listed thereon; Figure 3 depicts a page that allows a user to enter in a query for searching through a database of bookmarks; and

Figures 4-6 depicts pictorially the flow of data through a system for detecting bookmarked search results.

Detailed Description of the Illustrated Embodiments

To provide an overall understanding of the invention, certain illustrative embodiments will now be described. However, it will be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art that the systems described herein can be adapted and modified to provide systems for other suitable applications and that other additions and modifications can be made to the invention without departing from the scope hereof.

It is a realization of the invention that the indexing and cataloging of content on the

Internet can be distributed across the plurality of users on the Internet. More particularly, individual users of the Internet can develop, through the use of commercially available web browsers, personal databases of bookmarked URLs, each of which represents content identified by the user as being useful, and typically being a web page containing relevant information to a particular topic. Accordingly, the personal bookmarks of a user represent a small database of indexed Internet content. By combining these small databases in a central repository, a large well-indexed database of web content is achieved.

Although the invention is described below with reference to the Internet, the principles of the invention may be applied to any data network, such as a local area network, wide area network, virtual private network, wireless network, or the Internet. As such, it is specifically intended that the following description should not limit the invention to an Internet embodiment, and it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that other data networks or internetworks may be used.

Figure 1 diagrammatically depicts a system 10 according to the invention wherein a multitude of clients 12 are coupled through a network 14, such as the Internet, to a server site 16. At the server site 16 an online bookmark service can be provided that allows users of the network, such as the clients 12, to upload lists of bookmarks or individual bookmarks that have been identified as relevant or useful to the particular users. The clients 12 and the server 16 can be any suitable computer hardware, such as PC compatible computer systems, Sun workstations, or any other suitable hardware. Moreover, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that the clients 12 can also include personal digital assistants, or other types of handheld devices, and may also include wireless devices such as cell phones, wireless PDA devices such as the Palm VII, or any other suitable device. It will also be understood that in the applications where a wireless device is being employed as the client 12, the server site 16 will be modified as known to those of skill in the art to accommodate wireless client systems. One such server site wireless technology is the Palm.net service provided by 3Com Corporation.

The server at server site 16 can maintain a database, shown diagrammatically by the data storage element 18, for storing bookmark data compiled from users that have uploaded their bookmark lists. The depicted database storage element 18 can be any suitable storage element such as a hard disk, a redundant array of inexpensive disks ("RAID") system, a tape drive system, or any combination of these or other conventional elements for providing persistent storage of data. The database system can be any suitable database system, including the commercially available Microsoft Access database or the MYSQL database or any other suitable database and may be a local or distributed database system. The design and development of suitable database systems are described in McGovern et al., A Guide to Sybase and SQL Server, Addison- Wesley (1993). The system depicted in Figure 1 includes a database

storage device 18 that is separate from the workstation platform 16, however, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that other embodiments of a database device may be integrated into the workstation 16. Moreover, the workstation 16 and the database system 18 may also be incorporated into a server system that provides other functionality including web server applications, application server processing, and other similar types of applications. One example of such an online bookmark service is found at www.itList.com, a web site owned and operated by the Assignee hereof.

In one practice the service allows a client 12 to upload the bookmark file maintained at the client 12. To this end, the service can provide to a client a file dialog box that allows the client to identify which of the files on the client system 12 maintain the bookmark data. Once the bookmark data file is identified, the server can pull the file up and parse the uploaded file to convert the bookmark data into lines of text that identify information about the bookmarked Uniform Resource Locators ("URL's"). For example, in one practice the parser goes through the bookmark data file to parse each bookmark into a series of sub-units that include the title of the bookmark, the URL, and any information identified in the header of a page associated with that URL. The parsed list of text can then be stored in a relational database, or any suitable database with proper indexing for allowing rapid access of the data stored therein.

A URL may identify a page available on the Internet using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol ("HTTP"), or may identify another resource such as a File Transfer Protocol ("FTP") resource, mail resource, telnet resource, or the like. Any of these types of resources may be accessed using the Internet and stored as a bookmark.

In other practices, the online bookmark service may allow users to upload bookmarks through any number of suitable practices, such as by filling out forms provided on pages, employing Java scripts to provide active browser windows for entering URLs of interest, and by employing e-mail. In another practice, an "Add Bookmark" bookmark may be included among local bookmarks maintained by a client's browser. When a user selects the "Add Bookmark" bookmark, a local resource (to the client) such as a JavaScript script stored in the client's memory, may be accessed, the resource directing the client to store a currently viewed resource, such as a page, in the database system 18 as a bookmark. In this manner, a user may develop a collection of bookmarks in the database system 18 using the client's native bookmark feature, i.e., using a user interface similar to that used for developing a collection of locally stored bookmarks. In this practice, additional information relating to the bookmarked resource may be stored in the database system 18, such as a title, a rating, or a comment.

The techniques for generating pages, XML pages, or any other type of markup language page is well known to those of ordinary skill in the art and any suitable technique for generating such pages, forms or other instruments for providing information to a server can be employed with the systems and methods described herein without departing from the scope of the invention. Any other suitable technique can be employed.

Figure 2 depicts a page 20, which may be an HTML page, that can be generated by the online bookmark service and provided to a user to depict graphically to the user the bookmarks maintained by that user. It will be appreciated that a number of known systems for providing visual content to a user in the form of a page are known in the art, including HTML, the Virtual Reality Markup Language ("VRML"), the Vector Markup Language ("NML"), and programming languages such as Java. It will be appreciated that the term

"page", as used herein, is specifically intended to refer to a page of content provided through any of these systems, or other systems that may be used to provide visual content to a user.

As shown in Figure 2, the page 20 can depict bookmarks in a standard graphical format which shows categories of bookmarks, such as the BOATS category 22 under which a plurality of URLs such as the depicted URL 1 through URL 4 can be stored. It is understood that each of the URLs 1 through 4 is related to the BOATS category 22 assigned by the user as being associated with the URLs under that category. Similarly, other URLs can be stored under the bookmark list such as the URLs 5 and 6 which are shown as not being associated by the user with any particular category. In operation, a user can view the page 20 using the client 12 and click on one of the URLs to direct the client web browser to a program residing on system 16 that records the intended visit to the URL, then sends the client 12 to the intended URL.

In a further optional practice, the online bookmark service allows a user to select which bookmarks in their bookmark list can be provided to other users of the online bookmark service. Accordingly, the online service can provide a privacy mechanism, such as a checkbox on a page that allows a user to indicate a level of privacy to be associated with each URL in the user's bookmark list. Those URLs which are designated private will not be provided to other users of the online bookmark service, while those designated public will be provided to any user of the online service that wishes to see bookmarks maintained by other people, particularly if they are interested in bookmarks that have been identified as other users as providing good information on a particular topic of interest.

Other levels of privacy may also be provided. For example, a corporate group may be defined, without bookmarks being public among members of the corporate group, but private to those outside the corporate group. As another example, an anonymous level may be provided, in which a user uploads bookmarks that are publicly available, but that are uploaded without identifying the user providing the bookmarks.

Figure 3 depicts a query page 30 that can be a standard HTML page which provides a form to a user of the online service that allows the user to enter a search string into the query box 32. The search string can be employed for searching through the database 18 maintained at the service site 16. By entering text into the query box 32 and activating the form, such as by hitting the return key, the user can perform a simple search of the database 18 maintained

at the server site 16.

A query mechanism used to apply the search string to the database 18 may be any

conventional search engine capable of retrieving data from a database, such as the tables of a

relational database. This may also include a process operating on the server site 16 to receive

search requests from the client and present search results to the client. In the embodiment

depicted in Figure 3, a plurality of check boxes are listed under the heading fields, wherein

these check boxes allows a user to designate in which fields of the database the user wishes

the search engine to search for the query string entered in box number 32. In one practice, the

search engine searches through the entire database to identify documents related to the query

string, and generate a search results page which can be presented to the user. Those

documents in the search results that had the query string appear therewithin, associated with

one of the designated fields, can appear as highlighted documents within a list of search results to indicate their possible heightened relevance to the user.

In a further practice, the online bookmark search engine includes an information

supplementation system. In this system, the server can take the bookmarks uploaded by the

users and add other information to the bookmarks for the purposes of more fully categorizing and indexing the data stored therein. For example, in one practice each time a URL is

uploaded, the search engine can access the page associated with that URL to identify within

the header of that page the keyword fields and description fields associated with that page.

These keywords and descriptions can be copied from the page and inserted into the data in

respective fields associated with the URL. In a further practice, the search engine service can query a user whether the user wishes to enter personal comments about any URL entered by the user. For example, the service can provide to the user a page that collects from the user

comments about a site, keywords that the user feels should be associated with the URL, as

well as ratings such as the quality of the site in terms of providing relevant information on a

topic, or how cool or interesting a particular site is. In another practice, the service can keep

track of how often a user accesses a particular URL in their URL database. The number of

times a site is accessed by a user can also be employed as a measure of the significance,

quality, or relevance of a particular site. Any of this information can be employed by

searches, typically by providing a Boolean search mechanism that allows for complex

searches to be developed by a user. Such Boolean searches allow a user to search on one or

more words, using various logical operations, as well as for searching in different fields of the

database, such as the description fields, title fields, keywords, or any other suitable field.

In a further embodiment, the bookmark search engine includes a demographic analysis

system. In this system, the server can analyze the bookmarks of a user to generate a

demographic or psychographic profile of the user's interests. This information can be

employed for targeting the user as a qualified recipient for certain information. For example,

a user that maintains a bookmark category labeled BOATS may be interested in receiving

advertisements directed to boating technology, sportswear, or other similar categories. To

this end, the service can be adapted to modify a page of bookmark links, such as the page 20

depicted in Figure 2, to include additional information, such as advertisements which appear

as bookmarks or as normal Web-style advertisements within the page. This additional

information can be provided as hypertext and can be activated by the user for directing the

user's browser to a site of interest to someone with a similar demographic profile, as indicated

by that user's bookmarks. Additionally, the systems and methods described herein can be

employed for monitoring the bookmark activity of a user. For example, the system depicted in Figures 1 through 3 may be employed for allowing a system admimstrator to perform data mining by observing log files that have captured the activity of registered users at the site. Specifically, the administrator may view the log file to determine the web sites that a particular user has visited.

As the user may have registered to be a member of the site, the registration process may have collected demographic profile information, such as the user's name, address, income, interests, marital status, or any other similar demographic information. This demographic information may be married to the bookmark activity information associated with that user. Therefore, the system administrator can determine that a particular user having a certain demographic profile, for example a male in his mid-30's having an income of $60,000 a year or more, has been bookmarking web sites related to automobiles, such as the VOLVO™ web site, Ford web site, and similar web sites. The administrator can employ this information to determine that the user is interested in purchasing an automobile. This information may be employed by the web administrator to market to the user, such as by example sending an email, direct mail ad, a phone solicitation, or other such marketing activity, to provide the user with an opportunity to purchase an automobile from an automobile manufacturer that is an affiliate to the bookmark search engine systems described herein.

In a further practice, a page of bookmarks, such as the page 20 depicted in Figure 2 can be rearranged, or reordered by the server 16 to present the user a re-ordered or reorganized set of bookmarks. In one embodiment, the server includes a computer program, such as a conventional C language computer program, that is capable of rearranging, dynamically, and in response to a user request, the bookmarks presented in the bookmark page. The reorganization can happen on any one of a number of criteria such as the alphabetical order of the titles, the alphabetical order of the URLs, how recently the bookmark has been added to the list, how useful, or a usefulness grade, that is associated with the URL, or on any other meta-data associated with the URL. The organization can happen to display the reorganized bookmarks in either an ascending or descending order, for example, thereby allowing bookmarks to be displayed in ascending or descending alphabetical order. Accordingly, in one practice a system according to the invention allows a user to employ a function on the server site to reorganize the bookmarks maintained by the user at the online site.

Figures 4 through 6 depict pictorially the flow of data 40 through a system that is capable of detecting whether a user has bookmarked one or more entries presented as search results for a search query presented by the user to an Internet search engine. For example, the system 40 depicted in Figures 4 through 6 allow a user to enter a query, typically a search string into a remote search engine such as the Yahoo search engine, the Lycos search engine, the AltaVista search engine, or any other suitable search engine. As shown in Figures 4 through 6, that search query can be presented to the search engine and processed by the search engine to identify a set of search results that can be subsequently presented to the user. These search results may each be represented as a hypertext link, as is conventionally done, so that the user may click through the search results page to be delivered to the actual site of the information represented by the hypertext link in the search result list. As will be shown in more detail hereinafter, the information associated with the hypertext link, such as the home page of a particular web site returned as an entry in the search result list, may be presented as framed content to the user. The frame surrounding the content may include a control that the user may select for bookmarking the content for later reference. The system 40 can identify the bookmarking event and employ the bookmarking event as an indication of the relevance of the bookmarked content for the search query entered by the user or a similar search query.

As shown in Figure 4, the data flow diagram 40 includes a first web page 42, a search results page 44, a server 48, a search engine database 50, a web server 52, and a search engine process 54. The search engine database 50 may be an indexed database of Internet content maintained on a remote site and made accessible over the Internet, such as those provided by

AltaVista, Yahoo, Lycos, or some other search engine database.

As shown in Figure 4, the query page 42 may be a conventional query page that provides a text input field that the user may employ for entering a search string 51, such as the depicted search string "SEARCH 1". In one embodiment, the query page 42 is a conventional HTML form that may be employed for delivering the search query "SEARCH 1" to the server 48. The server process 52 executing on the server 48 may process the search query delivered to it by the HTML form 42 by presenting the search string "SEARCH 1" to the search engine process 54. The search engine process 54 may be a PERL script, a C program, or any other suitable gateway program that may be employed during data processing for delivering information to a database system, such as the depicted database system 50. The database system 50 may apply the search string 51 to the contents of the database 50 to identify a list of search results, each of which is representative of content that the database 50 has determined to be associated with the search string 51. It will be appreciated that the query page 42 may provide additional search functionality known in the art, including Boolean searching, wild card searching, case sensitive searching, field searching, and the like. After processing the search string 51, the database 50 may return to the server 48, the results of the database search, and the server process 52 may format the search results into a suitable page that may be presented to the user as a page 44 listing the search results obtained for the search query "SEARCH 1."

Turning now to Figure 5, the data flow continues wherein the search results of page 44 presented to the user includes a set of hypertext links, depicted in Figure 5 as links A, B, C and D. Each of these hypertext links identified as content stored on the Internet or any other computer network system, that the database system 50 has determined to be relevant to the user search query. As shown in Figure 5, by activating one of the hypertext links, typically by clicking on the link, the user may select the identified content for display to the user. In one practice, as depicted through Figure 5, the activation of the link causes the server process 52 to activate a process 58 that may comprise a framing process which will fetch data from a web site, such as the depicted web site A 60 that is associated with the hypertext link activated by the user. In the data flow diagram depicted in Figure 5, the web site A 60 includes a directory 62 that includes a plurality of pages, these pages generally comprising the content of the web site A 60.

Shown in Figure 5 is web page 64 that may representative of the home page for the web site A 60. The framing process 58 can collect from the web site A 60, the home page 64, and can direct the server process 52 to format the home page 64 as framed content to be presented to the user. To this end, Figure 5 depicts the server process 52 as delivering the web page 68 to the user, wherein the web page 68 includes the home page 64 as content surrounded by the frame 66 generated by the server 48. As further shown by Figure 5, the framed 66 may include a control 70, which can be a button or a hypertext link, that is integrated into the frame 66. The control 70 can provide the user with an opportunity to bookmark the web page 64 at a central bookmark storage location, such as the depicted database system set before.

Turning now to Figure 6, by activating the button 70, a user may store a bookmark in the bookmark database 74. Activation of the button 70 may further be used to identify an indication of user interest in the content of the home page 64 of site A. More particularly, upon activation of the button 70, the server process 52 provides the bookmark to the bookmark database process 72 for storage in the bookmark database 74. In addition, the server process 52 provides the bookmark to the search engine process 54. The search engine process 54 transmits an identification of the bookmarked site 64 to the search engine database 50, which the search engine database 50 may use in turn to assign a relevance to the home page 64 associated with the search query entered by the user.

The relevance assigned to the home page 64 may be determined using a number of methods known to those skilled in the art. As is known, the search activity of a user may be monitored and such activity may be used to organize articles displayed in the search results. Such as system may operate by assigning scores to key terms in categories for articles. As users enter search queries and select articles, these scores are altered. The scores are then used in such searches to organize or prioritize the articles that match a search query. One such system is described in PCT patent application WO 99/06924, entitled "Method for Organizing Information."

In such a system, the bookmarking event may additionally be used to assign scores to the results of searches performed through the server 48. For example, the bookmarking event may indicate that a particular entry in a search result list is particularly relevant to the search query entered by the user. Accordingly, the score can be appropriately adjusted to reflect this significance. When other users transmit the same, or a similar, search query to the search engine database 50, the home page 64 may receive a higher score, and accordingly appear higher on a list of results that is ranked by relevance. Other additional factors can include the amount of time spent at a bookmarked site, whether others have bookmarked a site for similar searches, or for any other searches, or this information may be combined with other demographic information available for the user.

The bookmark search engine may communicate information relating to the bookmark event to the remote search engine using agreed protocols. Scoring information relating to the bookmark event may be determined by the bookmark search engine and communicated to the remote search engine, or the bookmark event itself may be communicated to the remote search engine in a predetermined format so that the remote search engine can apply its own relevance or scoring systems to the bookmark event.

The systems and methods described above are representative of the types of systems and methods that could be created employing the teachings of the invention, and of course it will be understood that those of ordinary skill in the art can modify, supplement, or otherwise change the illustrative embodiments of Figures 1 through 6 without departing from the scope of the invention. Moreover, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that although Figures 1 through 6 graphically depict the bookmarked search engines described herein as functional block diagrams, it will be realized that these systems may also be implemented as computer programs or portions of computer programs that are capable of running on a data processor platform, to thereby configure the data processor platform as a system according to the invention. Moreover, although Figures 1 through 6 depict the systems as being bookmark search engines for use in identifying information stored on the Internet, in other practices, the systems described herein may be employed for identifying information on a intranet, standalone system, or any other type of electronic system suitable for storing information. Moreover, as discussed above, the bookmark search engines depicted in Figures 1 through 6 may be realized as software components operating on a conventional data processing system such as a Unix work station. In that embodiment, the bookmark search engines described above may be implemented as C language computer programs, or computer programs written in any high level language including C++, Fortran, Java, or Basic.

Additionally, in other embodiments where microcontrollers or DSPs are employed, the systems described above may be realized as computer programs written in microcode, or written in a high level language and compiled down to micro code that may be executed on the platform employed. Such embedded systems may be employed as parts of network switches, routers, or other network elements. Techniques for high level programming suitable for generating the components described herein are set forth in, for example, Stephen G. Kochan, Programmingin C, Hayden Publishing (1983).

Those skilled in the art will know or be able to ascertain using no more than routine experimentation, many equivalents to the embodiments and practices described herein.

Accordingly, it will be understood that the invention is not to be limited to the embodiments disclosed herein, but is to be understood from the following claims, which are to be interpreted as broadly as allowed under the law.

19

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A bookmark search engine, comprising a database having stored therein data representative of a plurality of bookmarks each identifying a resource on a network, the database being connected to a data network; and a query mechanism for allowing a user to enter a search string, from a client connected to the data network, for searching through the database to identify bookmarks associated with the search string.

2. A bookmark search engine according to claim 1, further comprising an uploading mechanism for allowing a user to upload into the database one or more bookmarks of interest.

3. A bookmark search engine according to claim 1, further comprising an information supplementation system wherein information is added to one of the bookmarks stored in the database.

4. A bookmark search engine according to claim 1 , further comprising a demographic analysis system.

5. A bookmark search engine according to claim 1, further comprising a privacy mechanism by which a user indicates a level of privacy to be associated with one of the plurality of bookmarks.

6. A bookmark search engine according to claim 1, further comprising a framing process, the framing process providing a mechanism by which a bookmarking event is captured and transmitted to a remote search engine.

7. A process for searching through content on a data network comprising providing a server at which a plurality of users store bookmark data including bookmarks, and information associated with the bookmarks; organizing the bookmark data into a database of searchable information; and providing a search engine program, accessible using a data network, that allows a user to enter a search string, and that employs the search string to identify to the user bookmarks associated with the search string.

8. A system for identifying information on a data network, the system comprising: a client; and a server accessible to the client using a data network, the server including a database process that allows the client to store bookmarks in a database; and the server having a query mechanism that allows the client to enter a query for searching for entries within the database, thereby allowing the user to identify information on the data network by identifying bookmarked sites stored with database and associated at the user query.

9. A system for marking search results provided by a search engine, comprising a client; and a server accessible to the client using a data network, the server including a framing process by which a query is transmitted to a remote search engine and a search result is displayed at the client, the search result including one or more resources, the framing process capturing a bookmarking event relating to one of the one or more resources and using the bookmarking event to determine a relevance of one of the one or more resources.

10. The system of claim 9, the server including a database, the database storing the relevance of one of the one or more resources.

11. The system of claim 9 wherein the framing process further transmits the relevance of the one or more resources to the remote search engine.