Importance

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Abstract

A system for estimating the total usage of computer system resources by all users with access to those resources, performed in such a way that desired demographic information is available and computer users are not deterred from using the resource by the usage estimation techniques. The system selects a computer system resource of interest, receives demographic information on various computer users with access to the resource, uses the demographic information to select some of the computer users to be a representative sample of all computer users with access to the resource, loads a copy of a monitoring program onto each of the computer systems used by the selected users, executes the loaded copies of the monitoring program so that usage of various computer system resources by the selected users is recorded, transfers the recorded information to a central analyzing facility, estimates the total usage of the computer system resource of interest by all the users based on the usage of the representative sample users, and rates the resource relative to other resources based on a resource characteristic that depends on the amount of usage. In one embodiment, the computer system resource of interest is a computer document or a computer website on the World Wide Web, and the document or website includes advertising information that is displayed when the resource is accessed and used. In this embodiment, the document or website is rated on the basis of its ability to attract computer users with demographic information of interest.

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First Claim