Patent describes way to save searches for the benefit of both searchers and registrars.
The U.S Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 9,972,041 (pdf) to GoDaddy for “Earmarking a short list of favorite domain names or searches”. The company applied for the patent in February 2015 and the patent was granted today.
The concept is to allow domain searchers to save their searches and for registrars to use this data to customize the user’s experience over time. With regards to domain searchers:
Applicant has identified multiple weaknesses in presently existing systems and methods for searching, selecting and registering domain names. No options in presently existing systems and methods allow a user to create a short list of favorite domain names or domain name searches that reflect the user’s interest in the domain names prior to entering a purchase path. A user may be unsure whether they want to purchase a domain name, but may not want to lose their research, including the original search parameters used, regarding an available list of search results and/or domain name suggestions. Currently, a customer’s only options with regard to searched and recommended domain names or searches include registering the domain name, adding the domain name to a shopping cart (if available) or ending the domain name search session, thereby risking the loss of the user’s domain name research, such as the parameters used to generate the desired search results.
For domain name registrars:
Specifically, a domain name registrar may want to customize a user experience or merchandising opportunities by applying machine learning to user interest patterns. These user interest patterns may include price points, preferred extensions (e.g., TLDs) and preferred subject matter (e.g., keywords in SLDs).
The inventors listed on the patent are Tapan Kamdar (VP of Product Management) and Garrett Matsudaira (Senior Director Mobile UX).
Anonymous says
lol – What a joke. Their next patent will be “for entering alphanumeric characters into a text field to search for a domain name”.
GTFO.
Jane Doe says
Patent for manually typing in an address into your web browser, bypassing the need for users to memorize IP addresses