Method & system for enhanced web page delivery

• US 7,260,774 B2
• Filed: 04/30/2001
• Issued: 08/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Thryv, Inc. (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Original Assignee: Inceptor, Inc. (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Inventors: Engels, Geert, Semeczko, George, Lambert, John H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Herndon; Heather R.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Tran; Quoc A.
• Application Number:
  US09/845,575
• Publication Number:
  US 20020038350A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,304 Days
• Field of Search: 715/513, 715/501.1, 715/511, 715/517, 715/526, 715/799, 707/3, 707/4, 707/10, 707/201, 707/104.1, 707/102, 707/175, 707/178, 707/2, 705/5, 705/14, 719/315, 345/719, 345/853, 709/202, 709/218, 709/328, 709/219, 709/217, 382/173, 358/1.18, 711/122, 714/799, 717/175, 704/9
• US Class Current: 715/234
• 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. The invention provides the ability to control redirection of Web traffic of humans and search engine spiders. It can differentiate between these types of 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 may generate dynamically optimized web pages targeted to specific search engines, in order to optimize the search engine ranking and visibility of a Web site, such as an online marketer'"'"'s Web site.

Claims

1. Method of enhancing web page delivery, comprising the steps of:

distributing URL links across the Internet wherein said URL links include marketing links and search engine search results, said URL links created through a marketing control engine, and wherein said URL links point to said marketing control engine in that humans who click on said URL links over a network are sent to said marketing control engine;

redirecting human visitors, who click on said URL links, from said marketing control engine to a web page, in an existing web site, that corresponds to said clicked URL link;

logging redirections, of human visitors, for reporting to an online marketer;

tracking movements of said human visitors across said existing web site of said online marketer;

receiving a request from a requestor, through said marketing control engine, for a web page content for a target web page;

identifying the requestor as either a human visitor or a search engine spider by examining a user-agent tag and an IP address of an HTTP request of the requestor, and comparing the user-agent tag and the IP address with requesting agent characteristics;

dynamically creating a virtual web page, for said target web page, wherein content of said virtual web page is tailored to a specific search engine to increase search engine rankings for said target web page, and wherein said virtual web page provides linking data designed so that a search engine search result for said target web page contains a URL link that points to said marketing control engine;

delivering said virtual web page to said search engine spider;

logging visits by search engine spiders, for reporting to said online marketer;

analyzing web traffic generated through said marketing control engine.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the request for a web page content is received via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link published or stored in the Internet.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the URL link includes banner advertisements.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the URL link includes affiliate links.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the URL link includes e-mail campaigns.

13. The method of claims 1 or 6, further comprising the step of:

logging for later reporting and dissemination all requests and actions taken.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising the steps of:

identifying the source link from which a human visitor requests a web page content; and

tracking via use of redirection with an IMAGE tag the human visitor across a plurality of web pages.

15. The method of claim 14, whereby tracking occurs across multiple domains.

16. The method of claim 14, further including the step of:

supplementing with additional dynamic code around the IMAGE tag in order to ensure that every request for the IMAGE is unique and to avoid caching the IMAGE data, thereby forcing each request to be processed uniquely.

17. The method of claim 14, further including the step of:

logging additional information including an email address to which a link was redirected, a referror URL and all information stored there.

18. The method of claim 14, further including the step of:

logging additional information including the value of a any transactions occurring during a human visitor'"'"'s visit on a web page, a referror URL and all information stored there.

19. The method of claim 13, wherein a redirect URL includes information regarding the source of web traffic being logged.

6. Method of enhancing web page delivery, comprising the steps of:

distributing URL links across the Internet wherein said URL links include marketing links and search engine search results, said URL links created through a marketing control engine, and wherein said URL links point to said marketing control engine in that humans who click on said URL links over a network are sent to said marketing control engine;

redirecting human visitors, who click on said URL links, from said marketing control engine to a web page, in an existing web site, that corresponds to said clicked URL link;

logging redirections, of human visitors, for reporting to an online marketer;

tracking movements of said human visitors across said existing web site of said online marketer;

receiving a request from a requestor, through said marketing control engine, for a web page content for a target web page;

identifying the requestor as either a human visitor or a search engine spider;

dynamically creating a virtual web page, for said target web page, wherein content of said virtual web page is tailored to a specific search engine to increase search engine rankings for said target web page, and wherein said virtual web page provides linking data designed so that a search engine search result for said target web page contains a URL link that points to said marketing control engine;

delivering said virtual web page to said search engine spider; and

logging visits by search engine spiders, for reporting to said online marketer.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein different web pages are dynamically generated depending upon the particular search engine spider identified as the requestor.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein updateable templates are merged with user entered data to dynamically generate the one or more web sites.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein updateable templates are merged with information stored in a catalog database to dynamically generate the one or more web sites.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein the redirecting is accomplished via a redirect URL.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising the step of:

updating in real time the redirect URL without affecting the existing URL.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising the step of:

automatically changing the redirect URL based on real time state information which can be influenced by the interaction of other requestors of web page content.

20. Apparatus for enhanced web page delivery, comprising:

a web server adapted to receive a request for web page content from a requestor;

and a control engine operating on the web server, the control engine adapted to execute the process steps of;

distributing URL links across the Internet wherein said URL links include marketing links and search engine search results, said URL links created through said marketing control engine, and wherein said URL links point to said marketing control engine in that humans who click on said URL links over a network send a request to said marketing control engine,

redirecting human visitors, who click on said URL links, from said marketing control engine to a web page, in an existing web site, that corresponds to said clicked URL link,

logging redirections, of human visitors, for reporting to an online marketer,

tracking movements of said human visitors across said existing web site of said online marketer,

receiving a request from a requestor, through said marketing control engine, for a web page content for a target web page,

identifying the requestor as either a human visitor or a search engine spider,

dynamically creating a virtual web page, for said target web page, wherein content of said virtual web page is tailored to a specific search engine to increase search engine rankings for said target web page, and wherein said virtual web page provides linking data designed so that a search engine search result for said target web page contains a URL link that points to said marketing control engine,

delivering said virtual web page to said search engine spider,

logging visits by search engine spiders, for reporting to said online marketer, and

analyzing web traffic generated through said marketing control engine.

21. Computer-executable process steps stored on a computer-readable medium, the computer-executable process steps to enhance web page delivery, the computer-executable process steps comprising:

code for distributing URL links across the Internet wherein said URL links include marketing links and search engine search results, said URL links created through a marketing control engine, and wherein said URL links point to said marketing control engine in that humans who click on said URL links over a network send a request to said marketing control engine;

code for redirecting human visitors, who click on said URL links, from said marketing control engine to a web page, in an existing web site, that corresponds to said clicked URL link, via a redirect URL;

code for logging redirections, of human visitors, for reporting to an online marketer;

code for tracking movements of said human visitors across said existing web site of said online marketer;

code to receive a request from a requestor, at said marketing control engine, for web page content for a target website;

code for identifying the requestor as a human visitor or a search engine spider;

code for dynamically creating a virtual web page, for said target web page, wherein content of said virtual web page is tailored to a specific search engine to increase search engine rankings for said target web page, and wherein said virtual web page provides linking data designed so that a search engine search result for said target web page contains a URL link that points to said marketing control engine;

code for delivering said virtual web page to said search engine spider;

logging visits by search engine spiders for reporting to said online marketer; and

analyzing web traffic generated through said marketing control engine.

22. Apparatus for enhanced web page delivery, comprising:

a signature database adapted to maintain characteristics mapped to names of requesting agents;

a content database adapted to maintain textual web content, and textual data concerning audio, visual, multimedia and dynamic web content;

a template database adapted to maintain Hyperlink templates; and

a web server adapted to execute the process steps of;

distributing URL links across the Internet wherein said URL links include marketing links and search engine search results, said URL links created through a marketing control engine, and wherein said URL links point to said marketing control engine in that humans who click on said URL links over a network are sent to said marketing control engine;

redirecting human visitors, who click on said URL links, from said marketing control engine to a web page, in an existing web site, that corresponds to said clicked URL link via a redirect URL and tracking human visitors across a plurality of web pages;

logging redirections, of human visitors, for reporting to an online marketer;

tracking movements of said human visitors across said existing web site of said online marketer;

receive a request from a requestor, through said marketing control engine, for a web page content for a target web page;

identifying the requestor as a human visitor or a search engine spider using the signature database;

selecting a template from the template database, the template having a Hyperlink structure tailored to a specific search engine wherein the Hyperlink structure is formatted based on search engine ranking criteria of said specific search engine;

dynamically creating a virtual web page, for said target web page, by merging content data from the content database with the template, wherein content of said virtual web page is tailored to said specific search engine, and wherein said virtual web page provides linking data designed so that a search engine search result for said target web page contains a URL link that points to said marketing control engine;

delivering said virtual web page to said search engine spider;

logging visits by search engine spiders for reporting to said online marketer; and

analyzing web traffic generated through said marketing control engine.

23. The apparatus of claim 22 wherein redirection is based on previous traffic visits and redirections.