REFERRED INTERNET TRAFFIC ANALYSIS SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20130179217A1
• Filed: 02/28/2013
• Published: 07/11/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Newton, Christopher Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 8,843,610 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7.29
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

Methods and a system for exploiting the secondary traffic generated by social networking sites are disclosed. Traffic on a commercial website is constantly monitored by a web analytics tool, which collects traffic measurements of hits, button presses, enquiries, purchases etc., as well as the referrer URL of a site such as a social networking site through which the commercial website is accessed. The collected measurements are forwarded to a Referred Traffic Analysis System. Concurrently, the Referred Traffic Analysis System crawls the Internet and collects a large number of social networking sites, analyses their content by extracting insight terms and phrases from them. In a third step, the collected traffic measurements are correlated with the collected insights from the social networking sites, and the top insights that reoccur frequently enough to appear to be a driver for the measurements observed, are presented to the client. A corresponding system is also provided.

Claims

1. A method of compiling marketing information for a client, the method comprising:

crawling blog posts that appear on a social media website to obtain crawled blog posts, wherein the social media website includes a universal resource identifier that points to a client website;

extracting an insight from the crawled blog posts, wherein the insight comprises words that describe an attribute of a product available for sale at the client website;

collecting measurements of traffic to the client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by referring blog posts on the social media website; and

associating the measurements of traffic with the extracted insight.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the collecting comprises collecting one or more events recorded in the client website.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the collecting comprises recording one or more of the following events:

visits to the client website;

number of orders of products from the client website;

number of orders of products from the client website divided into a category; and

number of downloads from the client website.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising aggregating the measurements of traffic associated with the insight across the crawled blog posts.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the crawling comprises crawling blog posts that contain at least one link to the client website.

6. A method of compiling marketing information for a client, the method comprising:

obtaining data from a plurality of social media websites, wherein each of the social media websites includes a universal resource identifier that points to a client website;

extracting a plurality of insights from the obtained data, resulting in extracted insights, wherein each of the extracted insights comprises text elements that denote product approval for at least one product available for sale at the client website;

collecting measurements of traffic to the client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by the plurality of social media websites; and

generating a referred traffic dynamics summary table based on the extracted insights and the measurements of traffic, wherein the referred traffic dynamics summary table aggregates the extracted insights across the plurality of social media websites to rank the extracted insights.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the referred traffic dynamics summary table ranks the extracted insights in accordance with their value in bringing business to the client.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the referred traffic dynamics summary table ranks the extracted insights in accordance with an assumption that the extracted insights have contributed to a decision to buy the at least one product available for sale at the client website.