Computer program product and method for refining an estimate of internet traffic

• US 7,890,451 B2
• Filed: 11/12/2007
• Issued: 02/15/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/09/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: comScore, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Compete, Inc. (comScore, Inc.)
• Inventors: McLagan, Donald L., Cancel, David, Moores, Lauren S., Query, Carl G.
• Primary Examiner(s): Woo; Isaac M
• Application Number:
  US11/938,710
• Publication Number:
  US 20080189254A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,191 Days
• Field of Search: 707600-831
• US Class Current: 707/607
• 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

Clickstream data collected from a panel of internet users is used to generate and present internet activity metrics. Data collected from a community of internet users may be augmented by clickstream data store content, third party content, search results, and other sources to form estimates of internet activity, such as traffic, that is structured and analyzed to produce metrics of nearly any internet web site or domain. The estimate of the panel'"'"'s Internet activity may be refined by applying a domain-specific bias adjustment to the estimate. Applying the domain-specific bias adjustment to the estimate may include applying a weight to a subset of the data that connotes a specific domain from the panel of Internet users.

Claims

1. A method of estimating Internet traffic, the method comprising:

taking a size and demographic composition of a target population;

identifying a group of participants within a target population;

determining demographic information for each member of the group of participants;

receiving click-stream data at a host processing facility from the group of participants that connotes Internet activity of individual members of the group of participants, wherein the data are from a plurality of sources;

producing, at the host processing facility, an estimate of a target population'"'"'s Internet activity by scaling the data for each member of the group of participants to the relative size and demographic composition of the target population and the group of participants, wherein scaling comprises applying a weight to the clickstream data in view of the demographic information; and

refining the estimate of the population'"'"'s Internet activity by applying a domain-specific bias adjustment to the estimate, wherein

applying the domain-specific bias adjustment to the estimate comprises applying a weight to a subset of the data from the group of participants, the subset of the data that connotes a specific domain.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the domain-specific bias is a promotional bias.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the promotional bias occurs when a source of clickstream data has a higher-than-relative growth in traffic when compared with other sources of clickstream data.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the domain-specific bias is a structural bias.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the structural bias occurs when a web site is overrepresented or underrepresented due to the makeup of the sample population, wherein the domain-specific adjustment is a weight calculated using triangulation.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the domain-specific bias is determined by comparing a selection of the most trafficked domains for both penetration and period-to-period growth across all sources of clickstream data and determining that the sources of clickstream data disagree.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the domain-specific bias is determined by applying a rules-based process to a matrix of all data from all sources for a selection of domains.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising, applying an inflation adjustment to the scaling to account for a variation in the Internet behavior of the sample population.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the variation is due to at least one of attrition within the community of participants, variability of the estimated makeup of the target population, reformulation of the target population, and modification of a benchmark or other basis used to formulate or estimate the target population.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the Internet activity comprises a physical activity of the individual members of the group of participants, the physical activity selected from the group consisting of clicking, dwelling, and viewing.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

producing, at the host processing facility, an Internet traffic rank of a web site based upon the estimate of the population'"'"'s Internet activity.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

producing, at the host processing facility, a visit metric of a web site based upon the estimate of the population'"'"'s Internet activity.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

producing, at the host processing facility, an engagement metric of a web site by applying site analytics to the estimate of the population'"'"'s Internet activity.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

wherein determining demographic information of at least one of the target population and group of participants comprises receiving the demographic information from a remote source.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the size and demographic composition of at least one of the target population and the group of participants is updated periodically.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the demographic composition groups the population based on at least one of gender, age, income, and geography.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein new members are added periodically to the group of participants.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein members are periodically removed from the group of participants, and wherein upon removing members from the group, adjusting the weight of the clickstream data from the remaining members.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising, adjusting the weight applied to the clickstream data related to the Internet activity of a new member of the group of participants.

20. A memory having computer executable code stored therein, the computer executable code adapted to be run on at least one computing device, the computer executable code realizing a process comprising:

receiving clickstream data at a host processing facility, the data from a group of participants that connotes Internet activity of individual members of the group of participants, wherein the group of participants is identified from within a target population for which a size and demographic composition is taken;

producing, at the host processing facility, an estimate of a target population'"'"'s Internet activity by scaling the clickstream data for each member of the group of participants to a relative size and demographic composition of the target population and the group of participants, wherein

the individual members of the community of participants are uniquely identifiable from the clickstream data; and

scaling comprises applying a weight to the clickstream data in view of the demographic information; and

refining the estimate of the population'"'"'s Internet activity by applying a domain-specific bias adjustment to the estimate, wherein

applying the domain-specific bias adjustment to the estimate comprises applying a weight to a subset of the data from the group of participants, the subset of the data that connotes a specific domain.