Described is a behavioral targeting technology for online advertising, by
which an original attribute is uniformly expanded. Users that meet an
original attribute are aggregated into a mid-result used to determine
similarity relative to candidate attribute types. The most similar
candidate attributes are selected for the expanded attribute. A URL/URL
pattern suggestion technology is provided, with similarity computed from
users/URLs visited by the users. URLs are separated into URL tree nodes,
for calculating the number of users who have visited each URL and the
number of users who have visited the URL on a sub-tree whose root is the
node. URL/URL patterns are output based on similarity. Domains are also
suggested based on user-visits. Similarities between pairs of domains may
be computed (e.g., offline), with an output for a given domain provided
in based on its similarity with each other domain.