A method and system for grouping metadata search results associated with
media on a computer network, such as multimedia and streaming media
include binning and iterative masking. The media metadata has an
associated media file, which has an associated uniform resource locator
(URL). Each URL has at least one field, and each field has at least one
character. Binning includes selecting, sorting, and putting URLs having a
common attribute into the same bin. Masking includes creating a mask of
masking characters. Each field in each URL in each bin is compare with
the mask. If a masking character matches a character in a field, the
character in the field is removed from the field. This produces at least
one resultant URL, i.e., URL that has been compared with a mask.
Identical resultant URLs are collapsing into one URL. Thus, redundant and
variant URLs are collapsed into a single URL, which may be provided to a
search system (e.g., search engine) and/or to a user.