Method and apparatus for distributing secure digital content that can be indexed by third party search engines

Abstract

In a secure content distribution system, the text is extracted and scrambled in content documents that include text. The scrambled content is made available for indexing by conventional search engines but is not available as plain text and thus is kept secure. The scrambling process breaks a text stream derived from the content document into two to five word phrases, randomizes the phrases and creates a text file from the randomized stream. Third party search engines are allowed to index the scrambled file so that search algorithms that search on particular words or phrases produce nearly the same number of hits as with the plain text file. A web server that provides the content returns either the scrambled content to a search engine or a link to the publisher by examining a user agent parameter that accompanies a content request. Alternatively the scrambled content also includes a script routine that links to the publisher.