Automatically instrumenting a set of web documents

• US 8,996,682 B2
• Filed: 10/12/2007
• Issued: 03/31/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/12/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Stevenson, Daniel C., Dabrowski, Olivier, Bozic, Kresimir, Teodosiu, Dan, Severini, Paolo, Costache, Cristian, Grant, Euan, Zigman, Erik
• Primary Examiner(s): STRANGE, AARON N
• Application Number:
  US11/871,831
• Publication Number:
  US 20090100154A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,727 Days
• Field of Search: 709/220, 709/224
• US Class Current: 709/224
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/025 for remote control or remote monitoring of applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention provide a method and system for automatically instrumenting a set of web documents, such as web pages, as well as embedding structures that present advertising content via the web pages. The instrumentation automatically embeds tags that enable usage information associated with the web documents to be tracked and recorded. Many hundreds or thousands of web pages can be automatically modified without user intervention, enabling comprehensive reporting and tracking to be performed on each page. The web pages are analyzed and insertion points intelligently located. Changes can be verified to ensure that no undesirable effects resulted from embedding the content. The tags can receive parameters customized to the level of users and pages. The tags, insertion information, and other configuration information can be stored in a central repository to make subsequent tagging easier.

Claims

1. A method for execution by a computing device for automatically configuring a plurality of web pages to track web-page usage information (“

usage information”

), the method comprising;

analyzing, by way of the computing device, the plurality of web pages to determine a set of web pages that have a structure that supports inserting a tagging structure that facilitates tracking the usage information; and

for each web page of the set of web pages;

(1) based on the analysis, automatically identifying an insertion point to insert the tagging structure that facilitates tracking the usage information,

(2) verifying that inserting the tagging structure into the identified insertion point does not alter the appearance of the web page, wherein the verifying includes comparing a rendering of the web page before inserting the tagging structure with a rendering of the web page after inserting the tagging structure, and

(3) upon verifying that the inserting does not alter the appearance of the web page, automatically embedding the tagging structure at the insertion point, wherein usage information about the web page is able to be tracked.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said analysis facilitates automatically identifying a tagging structure from a plurality of possible tagging structures to embed in the web page that was analyzed such that different web pages may receive different tagging structures.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the analysis of the a plurality of web pages includes an analysis of one or more documents to determine if they include an unrecoverable HTML error, and if so, performing one or more of the following:

presenting an indication of the unrecoverable error;

abandoning tagging; and

performing a default operation.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the tagging structure includes a code portion delimited by an opening tag marker and a closing tag marker.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the tagging structure can receive parameters based on user input or configuration.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the script facilitates experimenting user interaction with varied web-site topology, and wherein the experimenting includes one or more of:

A/B testing; and

multivariate testing.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically embedding the tagging structures includes embedding the tagging structures subject to a set of accessible rules.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing for a verification that the embedded tagging structure did not cause an undesired alteration of the web page with respect to its functionality before embedding the tagging structure.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

presenting a user interface that allows the tagging structures to be modified by way of providing data to the user interface, thereby not requiring a user to edit source code of a web page; and

automatically modifying the tagging structures incident to receiving input by way of the user interface.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising gathering user-configuration information and storing it in a repository for future recollection.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing change information that describes changes made to the web pages; and

facilitating an undo process that reverses any changes made by utilizing the change information.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising inspecting the web page for currently present tags, and updating or deleting those tags, wherein the tags include tags other than those embedded by the method of claim 1.

13. One or more hardware memory devices having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of automatically instrumenting a plurality of web pages, the method comprising:

automatically determining a set of web pages that are to be modified to receive customized content;

for each web page of the set of web pages,

(1) automatically analyzing the web page to determine an appropriate tagging structure from a plurality of tagging structures that should be embedded into the web page,

(2) automatically parsing the web page to determine an insertion point in the web page without requiring altering the functionality of the web page, wherein the insertion point is based on one or more of configuration information and rules associated with the web page, and

(3) verifying that inserting the tagging structure into the identified insertion point does not alter functionality of the web page, wherein the verifying includes determining that the web page is lexically valid both before and after inserting the tagging structure, and

(4) upon verifying that the inserting does not alter the functionality of the web page, automatically embedding the appropriate tagging structure at the insertion point, thereby enabling said customized content to be embedded into said web page.

14. The one or more hardware memory devices of claim 13, wherein the computer-executable instructions make up one or more of:

a web-based client application; and

an addition to a stand-alone, non-web-based application.

15. The one or more hardware memory devices of claim 13, wherein the tagging structure facilitates one or more of:

tracking visitation events associated with the web page;

presenting advertising content;

conducting A/B testing; and

conducting multivariate testing applied across a specified set of documents.

16. The one or more hardware memory devices of claim 13, wherein automatically embedding the appropriate tagging structure includes referencing a repository that stores configuration information or rules associated with the web page that is to have the tagging structure embedded within it.

17. A system for automatically embedding content tags into a web page so that its content is modified in real time as a request is made to view the web page, the system comprising:

a server that hosts a website that includes a set of web pages whose content is to be modified to receive embedded content in the web pages;

a storage repository that is coupled to the server and that stores configuration information that respectively associates tagging information with each web page in the set of web pages; and

a memory that provides access to a set of computer executable instructions that provides an ability to identify insertion points to automatically insert the embedded content tag into the web pages at respective insertion points without requiring altering an appearance or function of any web page in said set of web pages, wherein automatically inserting the embedded content tag into the web pages at the respective insertion points is based on the stored configuration information, and wherein inserting the embedded content tag without requiring altering an appearance or function of any web page includes determining that a Document Object Module for the web page is unchanged after inserting and then removing the embedded content tag.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the embedded content includes one or more of

advertising content;

web analytics that allow information about visitation events of the website to be gathered;

media such as videos, Images, audio, maps, cartoons from specialized websites, and slideshows;

programmed content such as including, for example, applets, flash objects, embedded, and instant-messaging services;

website gadgets such as guest books, surveys, and news presentation; and

Web 2.0 items such as tag clouds, RSS feeds, and wikis.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising a notification component in communication with the server and with the storage repository that, incident to a request to view a certain web page, references the storage repository to retrieve tagging information associated with the certain web page, and automatically inserts the tagging information in real time at an insertion point such that the said certain web page is presented to a requester with the tagging information embedded.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the storage repository stores one or more of:

services available for embedding;

tags for each embedded service;

tag information on location in files including required and optional parameters;

types of parameters that can be included in the embedded content;

specific formatting requirements;

rules for validating web pages;

rules for determining insertion points;

rules for embedding content;

parameterization options for the embedded content; and

tags-configuration information for one or more of the web pages.

21. The system of claim 17, wherein one or more of the respective insertion points are determined, at least in part, by receiving input from a user.