Importance

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Abstract

A method, software and apparatus are provided which enable promotion of products and services in a deterministic manner free of conflicting actions modifying raw ranking data based on merchants interests. For this purpose, an information consolidator is provided to obtain search results for a plurality of sources including directly from merchants. When a shopper enters a set of key words in an entry field in an on-screen form for a web server to obtain a list of items (products and/or services) of interest to the shopper, the documents describing the items can be prioritized by the information provided by the information source based on the web sites owner's priorities. The information consolidator receives ranking information taking the highest ranked products and obtains the product information for the most highly ranked products. The information consolidator then reranks the products using a preferred ranking algorithm to remove information sources biases in this ranking of the products. The information consolidator can add weighting factors such as those covered in the copending applications by the merchant. The weighting factors are combined with the mentioned ranking mechanisms to the documents to increase the probability that certain items come to the top when the search results are presented to the shopper. These pages could be used to promote products or otherwise direct the selection shoppers. The weighting factors are configured so as to not decrease the shoppers confidence in the ranking process.

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