Amazon's 6,912,505 (method of using browsing activities)

In US patent 6,912,505 (issued June 28, 05), Amazon has a claim to:

A computer-implemented method of using online browsing activities of users to identify related products, comprising:

generating, for each of a plurality of users, a history of products viewed by the user during online browsing, to thereby generate a plurality of user-specific product viewing histories;

analyzing the plurality of product viewing histories to identify correlations between product viewing events reflected therein, wherein analyzing the plurality of product viewing histories comprises, for each of a plurality of product pairs of a first product and a second product, determining a number of product viewing histories in which both the first product and the second product occur; and

generating a data structure that maps each product of a plurality of products to a respective set of related products, wherein product relationships indicated by the data structure reflect said correlations between product viewing events.

Claim 15 recites:

A computer-implemented method of identifying products that are related to a first product, comprising:

(a) generating a plurality of user-specific product viewing histories for a plurality of users, wherein each product viewing history indicates products viewed by a user during online browsing of a collection of products;

(b) determining a degree of relatedness between the first product and a second product, such that the degree of relatedness reflects a frequency with which both the first and second products occur within the same product viewing history of the plurality of user-specific product viewing histories; and

(c) performing (b) for each of a plurality of additional second products.

The '505 is a continuation-in-part [CIP] of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/156,237, filed Sep. 18, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,722.