Importance

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Abstract

A system, method and apparatus for determining an affiliation of visitors to a web-site under scrutiny is disclosed, having a log analyzer, a filter updater, and optionally, one or more affiliation lookup modules and a report creator. The log analyzer accepts and processes log data information relating to visitor traffic at the web-site under scrutiny, such as may be compiled by a conventional web data logger. The log analyzer subjects each log data entry to a series of cascading stakeholder filters, each of which may contain certain constituent filter criteria. If one of the criteria is satisfied by the log data entry, the entry is affiliated or associated with the corresponding stakeholder and stored in a database in association with such stakeholder. If the log data entry is not affiliated with any of the stakeholder filters, it is relegated to a remainder bin for processing by the filter updater. The filter updater attempts to generate filter criteria to trap the log data entry and stores such criteria in one of the stakeholder filters. The choice of stakeholder filter is governed by an affiliation identification exercise which may involve invocation of one or more of the affiliation lookup modules. Preferably, the affiliation identification exercise is facilitated by identification of a domain name corresponding to the IP address maintained in the log data entry. Preferably, the filter updating process operates in parallel with the processing of the log data entries. Further, advantageously, affiliation identification exercises in a first system may provide assistance in affiliation identification in a second system by cross-pollination.

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First Claim