Method and system for enhanced Web page delivery and visitor tracking

• US 20060248452A1
• Filed: 06/30/2006
• Published: 11/02/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thryv, Inc. (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Original Assignee: Inceptor, Inc. (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Inventors: Engels, Geert, Semeczko, George, Lambert, John H.
• Granted Patent: US 8,701,016 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

A system for and method of enhancing web page delivery and visitor tracking. The invention provides the ability to control redirection of Web traffic of humans. It can identify visitors to a Web page, track their movements, log critical information, and analyze the Web traffic in order to judge the success in driving quality traffic to some known goal on a Web site, such as a sale. The system tracks visitors via use of redirection with an image tag. The invention can also use unique image marker references to prevent browsers from accessing cached images.

Claims

1. A method of enhancing web page delivery comprising:

receiving a request for a web page content from a human visitor;

redirecting the human visitor to a web page in an existing web site;

identifying a source link from which the human visitor requests the web page content; and

tracking the human visitor across a plurality of web pages, wherein tracking is via use of redirection with an image tag.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the request for web page content is received via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link published or stored in the Internet.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the request for web page content is received via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link published or stored in the Internet, and wherein the URL link is selected from the group consisting of banner advertisements, affiliate links, and e-mail campaigns.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein redirecting is accomplished via a redirect URL, and further comprising updating in real time the redirect URL without affecting an existing URL.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising logging all requests and actions taken for later reporting and dissemination.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking occurs across multiple domains.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising supplementing with additional dynamic code around the image tag to ensure that every request for the image is unique and to avoid caching image data, thereby forcing each request to be processed uniquely.

8. A method of enhancing web page delivery comprising:

receiving an incoming request from a human visitor;

maintaining unique tags for each human visitor;

determining whether the incoming request indicates a previously tagged human visitor;

creating a new tag for each new visitor, and including the new tag in return headers of a new visitor;

placing image tags on web pages identified to be tracked, wherein said image tags redirect to an invisible image; and

marking with unique image references, pages visited by the human visitor;

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the image tag is placed using a standard HTML image reference.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the image tag is placed using a standard HTML image reference, wherein the HTML reference identifies a URL that requires a simple redirect to a real image file.

11. A method of tracking web site visitors comprising:

placing an image marker on a web page using an HTML image reference, wherein a URL within the HTML image reference requires a redirection to a real image file that is invisible, and wherein the URL requires a cookie to be associated with an image request;

receiving a request for web page content from the visitor;

associating a cookie and redirect image pair with a visitor to identify a visitor and log a path of the visitor through multiple web pages;

tracking the visitor using redirection and image markers.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising providing a real time tracking interface to allow selective tracking and monitoring of URLs.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising using a different URL for different sources of visitor traffic.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising generating a unique marker reference for each access to image markers.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising appending a time stamp to the image marker for each access to the image marker

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising using Java-script to generate an apparent unique marker reference for each access to image markers.

17. A method of enhancing web page delivery, comprising the steps of:

distributing URL links across the Internet, the URL links including banners, e-mails and affiliate links, wherein the URL links are created through a control engine operating on a web server;

receiving a request for a web page content, from a requestor, via one of the URL links;

identifying the requestor as a human visitor;

redirecting identified human visitors, to a web page in an existing web site, via a redirect URL;

logging redirections of the human visitors for reporting to an online marketer;

tracking movements of said human visitors across the existing web site using a return header and an invisible image tag placed on the existing website;

supplementing with additional dynamic code around the image tag to ensure that every request for the image is unique and to avoid caching image data, thereby forcing each request to be processed uniquely.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the redirect URL includes information regarding source of web traffic being logged.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein redirection is based on previous traffic visits and redirections.

20. The method of claim 17, further comprising the step of updating in real time the redirect URL without affecting existing URL links.