Importance

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Abstract

A method and apparatus for automatically customizing a vendor's web site, based on a web site customer's previous location or terms used in a search by the customer, to provide incentives for the customer to remain on that vendor's web site and purchase goods or services from that vendor is disclosed. When a customer lands on a vendor's web site, the customer's web browser reports the referring Universal Resource Locator (URL) to the vendor's web site. The URL is parsed and examined by the vendor's web site to determine the web site the customer previously was visiting or, if directed to the vendor's web site by a search engine, the terms used by the customer for the search. The terms included in the referring URL are compared with terms previously stored in a database. If any of the terms in the referring URL match a term stored in the database, the vendor's web page can be customized with special promotional offers, such as a coupon, or links to the other web pages related to the information retrieved from the parsed URL.

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First Claim