Referred internet traffic analysis system and method

• US 8,230,062 B2
• Filed: 06/21/2010
• Issued: 07/24/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Newton, Christopher Daniel
• Primary Examiner(s): Etienne, Ario
• Assistant Examiner(s): NANO, SARGON N
• Application Number:
  US12/819,402
• Publication Number:
  US 20110314142A1
• Time in Patent Office: 764 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709217-219, 709/224, 709/225
• US Class Current: 709/224
• 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, comprising:

(a) crawling blog posts;

(b) extracting an insight related to a topic from the crawled blog posts;

(c) collecting one or more measurements of traffic to a client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by referring blog posts, the referring blog posts including the crawled blog posts;

(d) associating the measurements of traffic with the extracted insight; and

(e) aggregating the measurements of traffic associated with the insight across the crawled blog posts, wherein the aggregating comprises multiplying each measurement of traffic by a weighting factor associated with respective referring blog posts to obtain a product, and summing the products.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step (c) comprises collecting the traffic measurements using a web analytics tool.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the step (c) comprises collecting one or more events recorded in the client website.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the step (c) 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.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the step (a) includes crawling blog posts, which contain at least one link to the client website.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the step (c) comprises collecting measurements of traffic referred from a subset of the crawled blog posts.

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

(a) crawling blog posts, which contain at least one link to a client website;

(b) extracting an insight related to a topic from the crawled blog posts;

(c) collecting one or more measurements of traffic to the client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by referring blog posts, the referring blog posts including the crawled blog posts; and

(d) associating the measurements of traffic with the extracted insight;

wherein the step (c) comprises collecting measurements of traffic referred from at least one additional blog post of the referring blog posts, the at least one additional blog post has not been crawled, the method further including crawling the at least one additional blog post and extracting the insight from the at least one additional blog post.

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

(a) crawling blog posts;

(b) extracting an insight related to a topic from the crawled blog posts;

(c) collecting one or more measurements of traffic to a client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by referring blog posts, the referring blog posts including the crawled blog posts;

(d) associating the measurements of traffic with the extracted insight;

(e) determining frequently reoccurring insights, which reoccur frequently enough to appear to be a driver for the measurements of traffic; and

(f) presenting a plurality of said frequently reoccurring insights and associated measurement of traffic to the client.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the determining comprises determining the highest number of insights associated with one or more selected measurements of traffic.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the plurality of said frequently reoccurring insights includes a number (K) of most frequently occurring insights, and K is between 5 and 20.

11. A non-transitory computer readable medium having computer readable instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor, to perform steps of a method for compiling marketing information for a client, comprising:

(a) crawling blog posts;

(b) extracting an insight related to a topic from the crawled blog posts;

(c) collecting one or more measurements of traffic to a client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by referring blog posts, the referring blog posts including the crawled blog posts;

(d) associating the measurements of traffic with the extracted insight; and

(e) aggregating the measurements of traffic associated with the insight across the crawled blog posts, wherein the aggregating comprises multiplying each measurement of traffic by a weighting factor associated with respective referring blog posts to obtain a product, and summing the products.

12. A non-transitory computer readable medium having computer readable instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor, to perform steps of a method for compiling marketing information for a client, comprising:

(a) crawling blog posts, which contain at least one link to a client website;

(b) extracting an insight related to a topic from the crawled blog posts;

(c) collecting one or more measurements of traffic to the client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by referring blog posts, the referring blog posts including the crawled blog posts; and

(d) associating the measurements of traffic with the extracted insight;

wherein the step (c) comprises collecting measurements of traffic referred from at least one additional blog post of the referring blog posts, the at least one additional blog post has not been crawled, the method further including crawling the at least one additional blog post and extracting the insight from the at least one additional blog post.

13. A non-transitory computer readable medium having computer readable instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor, to perform steps of a method for compiling marketing information for a client, comprising:

(a) crawling blog posts;

(b) extracting an insight related to a topic from the crawled blog posts;

(c) collecting one or more measurements of traffic to a client website, the traffic being referred to the client website by referring blog posts, the referring blog posts including the crawled blog posts;

(d) associating the measurements of traffic with the extracted insight;

(e) determining frequently reoccurring insights, which reoccur frequently enough to appear to be a driver for the measurements of traffic; and

(f) presenting a plurality of said frequently reoccurring insights and associated measurement of traffic to the client.