Internet website traffic flow analysis

• US 20040260807A1
• Filed: 05/04/2004
• Published: 12/23/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/04/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Omniture Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Barrelet, Blaise, Glommen, Charles
• Granted Patent: US 7,464,187 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3438 monitoring of user actions tracking the activity of the user H04L67/535
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/875 Monitoring of systems including the internet
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

An Internet-based analysis tool follows, in real-time, the flow of traffic through a website. For every website page requested by a website visitor, the state of the visitor'"'"'s browser is recorded and data relating to the path visitors take through the website is collected and studied. The state of the visitor'"'"'s browser path is maintained in a traffic analysis cookie that is passed between a website file server and the visitor browser with every page requested for viewing. The cookie is maintained in a size that can be passed from server to browser and back again without negatively impacting server performance and without negatively impacting browser performance. The data in the cookie can follow the visitor browser through independent file servers, regardless of how the pages of a website might be distributed in storage.

Claims

1. A system for tracking website traffic, comprising:

a website file server having a plurality of web pages, where one or more web pages include traffic analysis code comprising a reference to a graphical image; and

a traffic analysis server configured to receive a request for said graphical image, the request comprising a cookie, process the cookie to track website traffic, and respond to the request.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the cookie comprises a unique identifier.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the cookie comprises a site visit count.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the cookie comprises an average time between website visits.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the cookie comprises an elapsed time for the current website visit.

6. A method for tracking website traffic for a website file server having a plurality of web pages, where one or more web pages include traffic analysis code comprising a reference to a graphical image, the method comprising:

receiving a web page request;

parsing the web page request to obtain a cookie;

processing the cookie to track website traffic;

updating the cookie; and

providing the updated cookie and web page content in response to the web page request.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising validating the cookie.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the validation step comprises determining that the cookie has not expired.

9. A method for tracking website traffic for a website file server having a plurality of web pages, where one or more web pages include traffic analysis code comprising a reference to a graphical image, the method comprising:

receiving a request for a graphical image;

parsing the request to obtain a cookie;

processing the cookie to track website traffic; and

providing the graphical image in response to the request.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the processing step further comprises:

obtaining a unique identifier from the cookie;

correlating the unique identifier to a particular web page; and

incrementing a total visit count for the particular web page.

11. A computer system including a microprocessor, a persistent storage area, a volatile storage area, and a communication means, the computer system configured to receive a request for a graphical image, the request comprising a graphical image identifier and a unique identifier for a web page, the computer system further including an execution area configured to process the unique identifier to track website traffic and provide the requested graphical image in response to the request.