Method and system for enhanced web page delivery and visitor tracking

• US 8,701,016 B2
• Filed: 06/30/2006
• Issued: 04/15/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thryv, Inc. (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Original Assignee: Supermedia LLC (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Inventors: Lambert, John H., Semeczko, George, Engels, Geert
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Quoc A
• Application Number:
  US11/478,800
• Publication Number:
  US 20060248452A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,846 Days
• Field of Search: 715/208, 715/234, 715200-206, 715/745, 715/743, 715/241
• US Class Current: 715/745
• 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 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 a visitor;

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

tracking the visitor using redirection and the image marker.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a real time tracking interface to allow selective tracking and monitoring of URLs.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising using a second URL for different sources of visitor traffic.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a unique marker reference for each access to image markers.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising appending a time stamp to the image marker for each access to the image marker.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising using Java-script to generate an apparent unique marker reference for each access to image markers.