US 7,680,672 B2 · Event collection architecture

Abstract

The present invention relates to an event tracking server that determines event tracking information related to a user's interaction with a server device on a computer network, such as a server device for a Web site. The event tracking server determines the event tracking information by first receiving an event signal from a client device associated with the user, wherein the user used the client device to interact with the server device. The event signal includes an event ID and data that describes the user's interaction with the server device. The event tracking server then retrieves a set of instructions that correspond to the event ID included in the event signal and extracts the descriptive data from the event signal in accordance with the retrieved instructions. The retrieved data is then stored in a database. The user interaction with the server device can include various actions, such as downloading a file, placing or removing an item into or from an electronic shopping cart, purchasing an item, or using a search capability of a search engine.

Claims28

Dependent claims

A method of determining and storing event-tracking information at an event tracking server, the event-tracking information related to the interactions of a user of a client device with a content server, where the event-tracking server, the content server, and the client device are communicatively coupled via a computer network, comprising:

receiving at the event-tracking server an event signal from the client device associated with the user, wherein the event signal comprises data that is descriptive of a user interaction with the content server and one or more tags that identify the location of one or more items of data, the event signal being sent in response to a hyper-text markup language element received by the client device from the content server, and wherein the event signal conforms to the hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) and the event signal includes event definition data in the HTTP header and uniform resource locator parameters of the event signal;
analyzing the data at the event-tracking server to identify a specific user interaction;
retrieving a set of instructions from memory of the event-tracking server that correspond to the identified user interaction;
executing the retrieved instructions at the event-tracking server to extract data from the event signal in accordance with the retrieved instructions;
and
storing the extracted data in a database.

3 more elements

A method for tracking browsing events at an event-tracking server, the browsing events related to the interactions of a user of a client device with a content server, where the event-tracking server, the content server, and the client device are communicatively coupled via a computer network, comprising:

receiving via the network at the content server an event, the event being an interaction between a client device and the content server, the request originating from the client device;
dynamically generating at the content server an event definition section associated with the event, the event definition section including an event identifier and event definition data regarding the event that just occurred;
retrieving web page content in response to the event;
inserting the event definition section associated with the event into the web page content;
sending the web page content to the client device in response to the event;
receiving from the client device at the event-tracking server an event signal including the event definition section associated with the event;
sending an acknowledgment of receipt of the event signal;
parsing the event signal at the event-tracking server to obtain the event identifier from the event definition section;
using the event identifier to obtain an instruction from a memory of the event-tracking server;
executing the instruction at the event-tracking server to extract the event definition data from the event definition section;
and
storing the event definition data on the event-tracking server in a data storage area.

9 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Event collection architecture

Life of this patent

Event collection architecture

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims28