AUDITING A WEBSITE WITH PAGE SCANNING AND RENDERING TECHNIQUES

• US 20110078557A1
• Filed: 11/02/2009
• Published: 03/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/02/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ObservePoint, Inc.
• Original Assignee: ObservePoint, Inc.
• Inventors: Zinn, Richard A., Pestana, John, Seolas, Robert K., Broadbent, J. Tyler
• Granted Patent: US 8,132,095 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/362 Software debugging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3692 for test results analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level

Abstract

An automated website analysis system includes mechanisms for automatically reviewing a website and identifying various features of the website. In one implementation, the analysis system can rely at least in part on the actual downloading and rendering of each page in the website to determine not only aspects of website content and layout, but also whether various content, such as third party objects or source code, execute as intended. Additional features include recording user input that may be required to progress past web pages where automated site mapping would ordinarily stall. The analysis system can identify various items of interest about each web page to the website owner, including web page parent/child relationships, as well as the extent to which the given page content is consistent with its metadata descriptions.

Claims

1. In a computerized environment comprising a rendering system and a website having one or more web pages that have one or more parent and child relationships, a method of analyzing website health using both page scan and page rendering techniques, comprising:

requesting one or more web pages of an identified website pursuant to generating a site map of the website;

scanning the page code of at least one of the web pages without rendering the at least one web page to identify scanned web page information;

rendering the page code of the at least one web page, wherein the results of the rendered page code comprise rendered web page information; and

displaying a report of the website that includes a combination of scanned web page information and rendered web page information for the at least one web page.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

identifying an amount of image information to be rendered in the at least one web page; and

providing a value in the report that indicates a comparison between the image amount and an expected standard value of image amount.

3. The method as recited in claim 2, further comprising providing a score in the report that identifies a weight of the at least one page.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising generating the report for the at least one web page based on a comparison of expected information about the at least one web page with at least one of:

the scanned web page information;

or

the rendered web page information.

5. The method as recited in claim 4, wherein the report indicates whether content of the at least one web page is consistent with metadata for the at least one web page.

6. The method as recited in claim 4, further comprising:

wherein the expected information comprises privacy policy information supplied in the website; and

determining whether the at least one web page requests user information that is consistent with the supplied privacy policy information.

7. The method as recited in claim 4, further comprising:

determining from the comparison of expected information whether one or more key words used for advertising by an agent of the website were identified in the scanned web page;

wherein the report reflects the determination for key words.

8. The method as recited in claim 4, further comprising:

determining, based on the rendered web page information, whether one or more third party objects in the at least one web page were executed in accordance with the expected information;

wherein the report reflects the determination for third party objects.

9. The method as recited in claim 4, further comprising:

determining, based on the rendered page information, whether one or more expected values were passed during the execution of one or more executable routines found in the web page code;

wherein the report reflects the determination of any passed values.

10. In a computerized environment comprising a rendering system and a website having one or more web pages that have one or more parent and child relationships, a method of the rendering system automatically generating a site map that shows one or more of the parent and child relationships using page rendering techniques, comprising:

receiving a request to generate a site map, wherein the request comprises one or more end user provided processing parameters, and an identified website;

processing one or more web pages corresponding to the identified website in accordance with the user provided processing parameters;

rendering one or more of the one or more web pages; and

generating a site map for display in a user interface, wherein the site map shows one or more link relationships between a plurality of web pages in the website, and further shows rendering results for the rendered one or more web pages.

11. The method as recited in claim 10, further comprising:

identifying at least one parent web page in the identified website that requires user input to process the at least one parent web page; and

retrieving pre-recorded user input for the at least one parent web page, wherein the pre-recorded user input allows the at least one parent web page to be processed.

12. The method as recited in claim 11, further comprising:

providing one or more interfaces that allow an end user to provide input for the at least one parent web page; and

storing the user'"'"'s input as the pre-recorded user input.

13. The method as recited in claim 11, further comprising, after completing processing of the at least one parent web page, automatically identifying one or more child web pages that are linked to the at least one parent web page.

14. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the processing parameters comprise one or more of:

a level of depth for creating the site map;

or

a maximum number of web pages of the website to process when creating the site map.

15. The method as recited in claim 10, further comprising:

wherein the processing parameters comprise a set of one or more link filters; and

excluding one or more identified links from the site map based on the link filter.

16. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the processing parameters comprise one or more of:

a speed value that limits the number of requests made by a rendering system to the web server over a time interval;

or

a frequency for scanning the website.

17. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the processing parameters comprise an indication to prevent logging requests for tracking pixels while rendering a web page.

18. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the processing parameters comprise a selection for checking the spelling of text of a web page.

19. The method as recited in claim 10, further comprising:

displaying one or more results of the processing parameters with a visible rendering of each of the one or more web pages;

wherein the displayed results for each page include a speed at which each processed web page was rendered.

20. In a computerized environment, one or more computer program storage products having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed cause one or more processors in a computer system to perform a method of automatically analyzing website health using page rendering techniques, comprising:

requesting one or more web pages of an identified website pursuant to generating a site map of the website;

scanning the page code of at least one of the web pages without rendering the at least one web page to identify scanned web page information;

rendering the page code of the at least one web page, wherein the results of the rendered page code comprise rendered web page information; and

displaying a report of the website that includes a combination of scanned web page information and rendered web page information for the at least one web page.