Computer system and method with referral tracking for shared content

A tracking server for tracking sharing of web-content provided by a content server, the tracking server including at least one processor and at least one memory storing instructions, which, when executed, cause the at least one processor to:

• receive, from a requester, a first content request for accessing a content element on the content server, wherein the first content request comprises a first request Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (URLreq) with at least a content identifier (CI) specifying the content element on the content server, and a first referral identifier (RI) being a code indicating that the first request URL was previously used as a first response URL;
• generate a new and unique second referral identifier associated with the first content request;
• generate a new and unique first referral URL as a second response URL (URLres) for the first content request, the second response URL comprising the content identifier and the second referral identifier;
• and
• add the first request URL (URLreq) and the second response URL (URLres) as a first data record to a tracking data structure:
• serve the content element to the requester under the second response URL (URLres);
• receive, from the requester, a second content request for accessing the content element on the content server, wherein the second content request comprises the first request URL (URLreq);
• generate a new and unique third referral identifier associated with the second content request;
• generate a new and unique second referral URL for the second content request as a third response URL (URLres) comprising the content identifier and the third referral identifier;
• add the first request URL (URLreq) and the third response URL (URLres) as a second data record to the tracking data structure;
• and
• serve the content element to the requester under the third response URL (URLres).

A computer program product for tracking sharing of web-content provided by a content server, the computer program product being tangibly embodied on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that, when executed by at least one computing device, are configured to cause the at least one computing device to:

• receive, from a requester, a first content request for accessing a content element on the content server, wherein the first content request comprises a first request Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (URLreq) with at least a content identifier (CI) specifying the content element on the content server, and a first referral identifier (RI) being a code indicating that the first request URL was previously used as a first response URL;
• generate a new and unique second referral identifier associated with the first content request;
• generate a new and unique first referral URL for the first content request as a second response URL (URLres) comprising the content identifier and the second referral identifier;
• add the first request URL (URLreq) and the second response URL (URLres) as a first data record to a tracking data structure;
• serve the content element to the requester under the second response URL (URLres);
• receive, from the requester, a second content request for accessing the content element on the content server, wherein the second content request comprises the first request URL (URLreq);
• generate a new and unique third referral identifier associated with the second content request;
• generate a new and unique second referral URL for the second content request as a third response URL (URLres) comprising the content identifier and the third referral identifier;
• add the first request URL (URLreq) and the third response URL (URLres) as a second data record to the tracking data structure;
• and
• serve the content element to the requester under the third response URL (URLres).